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1940 Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital Building and Road Plan
The Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital (KRPH) has existed continuously at the Oakland Drive location since 1859, although then it was the Michigan Asylum for the Insane on Asylum Avenue. The Michigan system of asylums was designed to be self-supporting, with all manner of in-house industries and services providing food, clothing and other necessities for staff and patients, most of these located on the asylum grounds or nearby in the community. The Kalamazoo Hospital building plan shown below illustrates this principal very well. An inventory of the 1940's buildings includes Male and Female Infirmaries, Male and Female Hospitals, a water tower, cottages for staff and resident physicians, a Chapel, a greenhouse and workroom, a power plant, the Nurses' Residence, an auditorium, maintenance building and garage, cannery, laundry, and kitchen. Several miles away at the Asylum Lake Farm were more hospital units and staff cottages, piggeries and dairy barns, and cultivated fields.
A brief history of selected buildings*: