October 2020 lecture presentation for the Wayne Historical Society. A short historical review of the history of the County House later known as Eloise.
Following his return from World War I, my uncle Elmer was admitted to Eloise and spent the rest of his life there until he died. Upon his return from the war he was catatonic, my mother and Evelyn, his sister, visited him but because I was a child I was not allowed.
Turning this last asylum that's now in 2023 into a haunted house, ok I can understand a haunted house, but not one thing has nothing to do with Halloween things. It looks more like they are scaring you with what actually went on or was going on, and what they were doing and going through! In there. It's like ,,,, laughing at what they went through in real life!!! Can I say ,,mocking? And that's not cool!! 😢 They were real people!! May God keep them!!🙏. And bless all to this day and on. Who may have to go through or to a place like this!! Just think...what if you was in there? And no one cares, and no one is listening to you. And they are doing what ever they wanted! Too you! 😞😢😭 I am sorry, don't mean to step on no toes. Those for the haunted house. It's suppose to be for fun! But they are displaying what these people went through.
Very interesting, historical and educational. Our history books never mentioned anything about poor houses. I started learning about poor houses when working on family genealogy in the 1990’s. My dad was alive then and explained poor houses, censuses from the 1800’s that had a column labeled “white slaves”. Things we were never taught about the history books. Loved this video. 🥰👍🏻🙏
My late father, Dr. George M. O'Brien, who was a physician/ surgeon used to have monthly meetings at Eloise when he was connected to the Dept. of Public Health. He passed away in 1985. I recall him speaking of the place. He was very concerned about mental illness and those who were put out on the streets and ignored.
It’s time to declare that property a historic place! We can’t let anymore places fade away.. I love learning about historical places. SAVE THE HISTORY so others can learn, and admire the beauty!😍
I’m sorry, unique! Is that property a historic place now, did the turn it into a museum? Mental illness is out of control now, the government needs to take control. Get people off the streets, and in to a facility where they are safe, & cared about!
Too late. They tore it all down in the '80s, I believe. There are still a few buildings left but the ones they tore down? Awesome, huge old world architecture. Just like the rest of the old asylums.
Thank you Tyler Moll and the Wayne Historical Society for the real History of Eloise. Eloise was a large employer for our area. Varying levels of Mental Illness will always be a major Human affliction. Mental illness should always be a number one issue and treating people with respect a big concern for us all. This video was very well done.
I remember driving past Eloise as a child 60 years ago on our way out to my Aunt and Uncle’s house. It always freaked me out. The grounds were expansive and wondered about the ppl behind the vast gated walls
i worked on the grounds crew and in the greenhouse in 75 and 76 and i loved it.most of the patiens were gone by then but there were a few in d building.
My aunt used to work there as a nurse.She experienced her first dead person taking their. Last breath on the elevator on the way to take a body to the morgue.
We used to go "ghost hunting" on the Eloise grounds in the early 2000's as teens. At that time only the old broiler room was still up but abandoned. I remember some odd activity and my friend claimed to be "pushed" upstairs and he was alone. 20 years later in 2022 I learn that my papa's birth mom died at Eloise in 1945. She was was only 34 years old.
Wow, I just found this video. It brings back alot of memories. My grandpa was the Nankin Superintendent (Sherman Bunnell) for 20 years in the 30's and 40's. I grew up with them in Wayne. My aunt, their daughter received a degree in social work and worked at Eloise briefly.
I am 66 yrs old n grew up in Inkster, then Dearborn Michigan n TOTALLY remember the Eloise Inn Tavern on that corner driving by it for years, though never going there. Wish I would have seen what it was like!!
This is soooo cool. I grew up around there and I would often ride my bike and just wonder about that place. I always wanted to sneak in but I was scared. This was in the mid eighties..thanks for the upload (super sentimental❤❤)
Very interesting. My mom worked for a doctor at Plymouth State Home and Training School in Northville Twp. She would sometimes drive to Eloise to deliver paperwork of some sort. I was very young but remember going in the car with her. This history is fascinating.
Back when Americans were self sufficient and actually attempted to take care of the populace. Think of the amount of jobs created to build this place and then run it. Regardless what you think of the use for the place it's the fact that something was at least attempted for the society at large. To let these places to simply fall into ruin is a disgraceful waste.
Interesting how many of the asylums here in the US we’re all kind of ended at the same time frame as all of the asylums in the UK came to an abrupt end
Well, growing up in the 60's, my parents often threatened to send me there if I didn't start to act "normal". I think they were half serious. Turns out I am on the autism spectrum!
One of the buildings is an haunted attraction now. Off of Michigan Ave, between Merriman and Henry Ruff. They also have an Pyschiatric hospital that is connected to the Eloise building as well.
growing up one of the ways in witch my family decided to make all us kids, cousins and all keep on the good path instead of causing trouble was our mothers used to tell us if we misbehaved we were going to be put into Eloise. Talk about cruel. We were actually terrified of that place. Sadly my oldest cousin in the family did end up being put there really briefly, but I remember my mother and one of the aunts when they found out went there and basically said hell no. they broke her out of there and I guess had to threaten the staff when they tried to block and bully my mother and aunt. My cousin was not disabled or in need of a hospital or poor farm. She basically was messed up by her ex with PCP being put into salt shakers. Anyway, because of who my mothers family is the staff backed off really quick. I never wanted to see that place and still don't. What they did to a lot of those poor people makes me sick and sad.
Thank you for this interesting presentation. My dad was there when I was only 4. That would have been between about 74-76. I think he was in the new building. According to your presentation, that was only up about 5 years. We later found my dad living on Cass in Detroit in an old run down motel that was soon torn down. After that we never saw him again.
Thanks for making this! I recently got my hands on a camera that (in theory) was used here. I was looking into the history and this was incredibly helpful!
I remember the general hospital they tore down towards the end of the video, hold memories for me. I was seven years old and needed major surgery, i rmember the doctor, the pediatrician, DR. Gadowski, he was kind to me. Almost died in that place when my intestines burst open after surgery. The children's ward was a fun place, was always getting in trouble the whole six months i was in there. Hanging from the curtain tracks like a monkey lol, among other things. What i didn't like about it was at the end of the day when mom and dad had to leave and i was there looking out the window down the hall. Dad said he was always park where i could see them go to the car. They would always wave up at me and i would wave back and watch them drive away.
Thank you so much for such a nice documentary and history lesson. I've grown up in Wayne County and this was really interesting. My boyfriend and I are going to the haunted house attraction set up in Eloise tonight and I was interested in the history of the place. Great video!
grandfather had a brother that was in there passed away in 1967 remember as a kid riding in family car once a week seeing the people walking the grounds very sad
My grandma was in there starting in around 1947. I'm not sure how many years she was there but I know in the '80s, she was in a halfway house. I have no information about her. I'm wondering if there's a way to get any records of her stay at the hospital.
When I was a child my mother was in Eloise asylum several times due to what they used to call nervous exhaustion and hysterics. My grandmother would take me and my brother there to visit her. It was horrible, dirty and decaying. Patients were not properly cared for. The sad thing is not much has changed for the underprivileged with mental health problems
My grandma died in there ,she was only 37 ,wish I could get her files ,I do have her death certificate, she had a brain aneurysm and a tumor, made her act crazy 🤪 where can I get her files ? Does anyone know !
I’m so sorry to hear that, gone too soon for sure. I would search, “Michigan Archives” on Google or go to your local library, whichever one seems to have the most services, or is the largest. I would ask a librarian, the older the better. They are trained to find all kinds of things. I believe they will know right where to look or can ask someone who does. Good luck! 🍀👍 😇
awesome video! I go in Eloise any chance I can get(legally). like 15 years ago or so when the Kay beard building had a museum on the first floor, or recently with the "paranormal" tours and haunted houses.
The hospital next door was wayne co general hosp, i believe. It commonly was for lower income/public bens yrs ago. Surprisingly, it indicates eloise which in the local area is synonymous to mental hospital. That is not the case in the 70s at all, its what i stated above.
That was very interesting even though I don't live in Michigan. Up the road from me is our County home. They used to have a working Farm also. Now they just house people that are not able to afford anything else.
What they now call trash town because of high drug use and crime. Originally, it was built for our soldiers and families when they returned from the war. The duplexes were new and affordable. They remained low income but very nice homes until early 1980.
I took 2 hits of blotter acid on Halloween night 93' and went to "the tunnels" as we used to call it in high school...it was really bad idea, that place was /is permeated with very unpleasant energy.
@@ChrisKitz24 he didn't say he "saw things"... He said there was bad energy and, yeah, I would trust a guy on acid about that subject more so than one that wasn't on acid...
If you didn't hang out in those buildings in the late 80's early 90's, you missed out on all the fun 😉 Still have some old files. I grew up staring at the buildings outside my bedroom window right on Palmer.
@@ravenbaa7989 I protected files. Nobody gave a shit about those files and left them to sit and rot. If you didnt go in there in the early 90's, then your best bet is to sit down n STFU.
@@ravenbaa7989 but technically ypu could say I stole files that belonged to no one administratively. Withput people like me the dumb fucking teenagers would have ruined them all. Only reason the museum (which is an utter joke of a place that tells you bare minimum of the place) even have exhibits like they do. You can still sneak into the back of the grounds and dig up medication glass bottles among many other items that were forgotten with time. Just like everything to do with Eloise. If you cant see it from your bedroom window, and went through ALL parts of the ENTIRE buildings back in the mid 80's when it closed into the early 90's when I went there a few times a week and grew up with Eloise as the view from your childhood bedroom window (I live on the main cross street it is on now, but lived directly across from it while patients were still there then your opinion means absolutely nothing. Zero, zilch, nada.
We went wrong when we allowed a majority of these hospitals to close in the late 60's and into the 1970's. The results are evident of what this decision has created when you visit any prison, county and city jails or take a look at 95% of those who live on the streets clearly battling severe, untreated mental illness. These folks belong in hospitals, not on the streets, not in prisons...not being tossed in drug/alcohol rehab centers where they can just walk away...we need the in-stay...sometimes long term hospital care.
I really have no idea why so many people praise Ronald Reagan. He also introduced draconian drug laws for non-violent offenders -- in my state you can rape a child and get less time than first-time drug possession.
Michael, I worked in psych for 25 years. it used to be called psyhatric nursing, slowly and rapidly it became mental health nursing. changed 180 in 25 years. now it's all about me mostly .The mad are left to their own devices and indeed live poorly. I'm out of it now. I miss the mad they were sweet, mad people. They have been replaced by bad people. that is sad. The job is soul destroying if you stay too long now.. You become very jaded.
The process of closing the psychiatric hospitals down didn't end in the 70s. In fact it continued to accelerate through the 80s and 90s. I remember John Engler being a key figure in the budget cutting and closing of the hospitals here in Michigan at the time. Many conservative politicians, including our president at the time, Ronald Reagan, tried to spin the closures as a good thing for the patients, pretending that they were all going to be "mainstreamed" back into society - as if every single one of these patients had someplace to go in the first place. Many of them did not have families who were able to take care of them, even if they tried. There might not have been an adult available to supervise the psychiatric patient all day, because all the adults in the household had to work outside of the home, or because they just didn't have the emotional and financial means to do so. Some did not have any living relatives anymore, or relatives, who had their own mental and/or substance abuse disorders, and were not going to be responsible guardians. Yes, there were some terrible conditions in some of these hospitals, so the other selling point that the conservative politicians used was to point out the flaws in the system. But in reality, the people who were housed in these facilities quite often just ended up on the streets instead. Not an improvement in their conditions by any stretch of the imagination. They could still be taken advantage of on the streets, and now they no longer had a roof over their heads or regular meals either. In Michigan we have lost 90% (NINETY!) of our inpatient psychiatric beds since the 1980s, both adult and pediatric. It is still extremely difficult to find an available inpatient bed for adult psychiatric patients who need one acutely, and it's next to impossible to find one for a child. Usually what happens is the adults are parked in the emergency room for days at a time with social workers trying to find a placement, and parents take their mentally ill children back home and take time off of work to drive them back-and-forth to a day treatment program if they are lucky. I worked at nearby Garden City Osteopathic Hospital back in the 80s when they closed Eloise. The number of mentally ill people and homeless people showing up at our emergency room went up significantly at that point. No matter how much politicians want to pretend that budget cutting is always a good thing, there are just certain services that need to be taken care of at the state and county level. And these psych facilities need to be staffed by people with the proper training, and they need to be paid a wage that makes it worth doing that very difficult job. And that needs to be paid for with tax dollars.
Pretty sure this is my family line here it would be my great great great grandfather. I was told chains were used on walls and such but removed near the end of the asylums life... a type of liberation. My grandfather arthur bennett is from detroit.
I think it's called Palmers Field but your right it exsist over 10,000 a lot of the people we will never identify although we do have the means. The historical society posses ""Death Books". The unmarked graves are marked not by name but a number each number is in the book and the book has their name. They haven't located all the graves but I read it has 7,000 some marked with names and over 10,000 "unmarked graves.
I didn't know that area had so much history. I was born in Eloise Michigan. I tried to find Eloise but there was no listing. I'm curious, I want to know my history. Was Eloise a city? I heard at one time it had it's own ZIP code, and from some of the history, I learned that it's Westland now. I live in Wayne Michigan, maybe someone can help me figure out where is Eloise Michigan.
I was doing research as well. My birthday certificate states Eloise Michigan. I can't find the city listed either. I just requested a new BC. I also learned it's now Westland.
Great video I have a question though I fly model airplanes with the signal seekers rc club we are on the field directly south of the kay building you can see eloise in the background of my videos. I was wondering what the history of that 200 acre plot of land is
I grew up in Livonia, went to Stevenson high school class of 86. I used to go there and explore the tunnels and buildings a lot, spooky place, always gave me the creeps but I couldn't help but go there. 😬
My late Mother Doris VanDecar was the head secretary at Eloise from 1953-1962 she would tell me stories on how some of the patients who were Korean War survivors, Would flirt with her because she was gorgeous. She was there until 1962 when Wayne County General Hospital opened it doors. then she became the head Administrative secretary to the board under Dr Wells until she retired in 1981. She would tell me stories there that would make your hair stand on end. My Grandfather Mathew VanDecar died in Eloise in 1962.
So may I ask, if your mom knew what was going on, why would she put her father in there or her father in-law? What was going on with your grandfather so bad that he had to go there. Don't mean to be nosey, just want to understand..🙏
They need to break ground on another Poor House if you’re unemployed or on drugs,Nuts,Loitering,no drive they drive you out to the edge of town lock you in the Poorhouse.
Waittttt wait wait. I did googling, and the old log cabin selling for $2, in today's economy is equivalent to like $88. Yet average pay was like $1 an hour minimum. How does that work?
It's a haunted house, escape room, history tour, and paranormal activity walk through. They sold a lot of the land now there's a strip mall with a Krogers. It's 904 acres there is already housing on the land and has been for quite some time except the cemetery and museum.
I live in Upstate New York. Michigan has a number of county’s, towns and villages with the same name as we do, like Romulus, Ovid, Seneca, Rochester. People that continued the western migration from New York to Michigan reused these names. Annoying.
Thank you so much for this history of Eloise; but please don't desecrate the memories of our loved ones who suffered there by allowing mockery and irreverence; by continuing to offer it as a Halloween destination. Scroll down and read the comments of those who have 'played' there. It's as if they are trampling graves.
We really need places like the poor houses once again. Where people could work grow their own food like Eloise did. The shelters we have now some across the country are so crowded that I've heard there's not enough room for everyone. You have to be there by a certain time each evening and they have you leave like 6am.
