U-M To Raze Landmark Building In Psychiatry

Demolition crews are about to tear down Beal Residence at the University’s Medical Center, one of the more notable landmarks in the development of modern American psychiatry.

The ground it occupies is needed for an addition to the U-M medical sciences building.

The first patients entered the building —originally called the State Psychopathic Hospital—59 years ago almost to the day of demolition: Feb. 7, 1906. Demolition is scheduled to begin on Feb. 1.

During the intervening years Beal has been the site of detailed investigations into hypertension, severe burns, industrial engineering applications to hospitals, and concepts of ambulatory care of patients. It has been a focal point for the training of psychiatrists, nurses and medical students, and for research on the human brain.

In addition, the building served as a training center for doctors and nurses in two World Wars, and housed the first planned program of training in psychiatry in the United States.

Its name memorializes the work by Ella Travis Beal, wife of a University regent, in the care of U-M students stricken during the vicious influenza epidemic of 1918.

The Michigan Legislature appropriated $50,000 in 1901 to create the facility in response to long efforts by Dr. William J. Herdman to add a psychiatric ward to the University Hospital. Ground was broken in October, 1902, and the structure was completed three years later: the nation’s first state psychopathic hospital created as an intimate part of a university.

There were 40 beds for patients in the original building, and the patients themselves were selected from state hospitals throughout Michigan.

Patients were housed on the first and second floors, and in a wing added about 1923. The third floor garret furnished living quarters for nurses and resident physicians, and the basement contained kitchen, dining rooms and laboratories.

For years, these labs served as a central testing ground for brain and fluid specimens sent in by all state hospitals in Michigan. (Even today, the U-M continues to perform analyses of brain specimens for some hospitals under the arrangements made more than half a century ago.)

Under the guidance of Dr. Konstantin Scharenberg, the U-M accumulated a collection of brain specimens believed to be the largest in the country outside the Army Medical Museum.

The U-M department of psychiatry was created in the Beal Residence. There have been only two chairmen of the department throughout those years: Dr. Albert M. Barrett and Dr. Raymond W. Waggoner.

Dr. Barrett took charge with the opening of the building in 1906. “We think,” says Dr. Waggoner, “he may have been the first full-time professor and chairman of psychiatry in any university in the United States.”

Dr. Barrett died in 1936 and Dr. Waggoner took over several months later.

In 1939, the psychiatry department moved into new quarters in a wing of University Hospital, and the Beal Residence became the home of the Nursing Service. Where the building had been one of five training centers in psychiatry for the Army Medical Corps in World War I, upon the outbreak of World War II it became a residence hall for the Nurse Cadet Corps, preparing young women for military service.

During recent years, Beal has served as a convenient residence for out-patients undergoing treatment or extensive diagnostic procedures in the University Hospital clinics. All patients will have left the building by Wednesday.

Dr. A. C. Kerlikowske, hospital director, has noted that the demolition of Beal will prove a major inconvenience for these patients, “ . . . but, hopefully, only a temporary inconvenience.”

Says Dr. Kerlikowske, "We learned over the years that having Beal Residence available for outpatients has brought a number of surprising advantages. The full resources of the hospital and clinics are just a few steps away. Patients who are not too ill to take those steps, have gained all the advantages of bedside care at minimal expense.

“The Beal Residence has proved so valuable in this regard that we are now actively planning a brand new ambulatory care facility that will extend this concept of patient care to a greater number of people.”

Mrs. Hazel D. Fitzgerald has been the house director of Beal Residence for the past several years. With a small staff, she has furnished accommodations for about 500 persons a month —mostly outpatients with some out-of-town relatives of patients in the main hospital.

She worries how these people will be taken care of until the ambulatory care facility is created.

Outside, flanking the main entrance, is a bronze plaque dedicated to “Ella Travis Beal, 1861-1944 . . . One who thought more of others than herself.”

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Historic Structure To Be Razed

The University Medical Center’s Beal Residence, which housed the first state psychopathic hospital in the nation to be created as an intimate part of a university, will be razed to make way for an addition to the U-M medical sciences building. In recent years the structure has been used as a residence for outpatients. Demolition will begin Feb. 1.