What are these building? [Herman Kiefer Hospital]

[chriszke]

Having read through these forums, I've no doubt someone will be able to educate me.

I travel s short distance on the Lodge, between I-94 and the Davidson. Just south of the Clairmont exit, on the west side of the Lodge is what looks like a campus of rather large buildings. I can't tell whether they are still occupied...but I see an occasional light on the inside during the night.

The buildings are 5 or 6 stories tall and massive. The buildings have a classroom-look to them.

I pulled off the freeway once to try to get a better look, but the neighborhood surrounding them is pretty awful, and after a short drive around...I just didn't feel safe. I've looked at a number of Detroit maps, but haven't found one which provided a clue yet.

Can anyone on here help?

Thanks, Chris

[jcole]

I think you're talking about Herman Keifer Hospital.That's where Detroit has its Department of Vital Records.

[Danny]

Herman Keifer Hospital was once an earliest Jewish Detroit Hospital before Sinai. Most of the buidings next to Herman Keifer is still there, some are abandoned and some been town down.

[chriszke]

Wow.

Did it USED to be a hospital or does it still function as one?

I'll google the hospital name & see if I can make the match. The buildings are [[or at least look) in pretty bad shape.

Thanks.

[jcole]

Wow.

Did it USED to be a hospital or does it still function as one?

I'll google the hospital name & see if I can make the match. The buildings are [[or at least look) in pretty bad shape.

Thanks.

I think it's called the Herman Keifer complex now, and I don't think it functions as a hospital. It does, however, house the Vital Records dept for the City of Detroit. I had to go there and get my birth certificate because I was born in Detroit.

[chriszke]

I think you're talking about Herman Keifer Hospital.That's where Detroit has its Department of Vital Records.

Yup, that's certainly the place. Thanks for the ID.

Looks a little livilier on pictures which show the front of the building. It looks almost abandoned from the Lodge side..

[jcole]

I misspelled Kiefer. Here's the only pic I can find

[chriszke]

I misspelled Kiefer. Here's the only pic I can find

It looks better from the front.

There are a number of smaller buildings which appear to be part of the same complex. It was apparently a hospital which dealt with tuberculosis among other communicable diseases.

I stumbled upon some pretty interesting reading to be done regardings corruption and mismanagement which occured in the 1930's.

Something about it intriques me...but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Maybe it's the appearance with ALL of those windows...

[Patrick]

I am pretty sure Richard Marr designed the buildings and maybe even the entire complex. Marr married the granddaughter of Herman Kiefer so that explains it.

[jcole]

Chris, I've always found it very intriguing from the outside too. It's got an aura of some sort that I can't quite name. Maybe it's all the people that have gone in there and never come out or the history of the area. It's so permanent looking.

[EastsideAl]

Herman Kiefer, in addition to dealing with communicable diseases like tuberculosis, which was rampant back in the late 19th and early 20th century, also dealt with several other public health issues of the time, like venereal diseases and mental illness.

It was used as a public health hospital for the indigent. My mother was treated there as a child during the depression. It was also a place where single mothers could be cared for and have their babies, back when unmarried mothers were effectively banned from more "respectable" maternity hospitals. Broken families and families in trouble could give up their children there, and orphans would be taken in and taken off the streets. There was an orphanage on site in which many Detroiters were raised for all or part of their childhoods. I know the great jazz trombonist Curtis Fuller was amongst the kids who grew up at Herman Kiefer.

Today, in addition to the vital records bureau, it is the headquarters of the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion, which operates a no- or low-cost health and dental clinic there, as well as social services and child rearing and nutritional support. Until early this year a substance abuse clinic and methadone support was also run out of there.

[BVos]

It's also home to millions of roaches, rats & mice. It's always struck me as incredibly ironic that the health dept. building is full of roaches.

[EastsideAl]

I don't think that Herman Kiefer was ever a Jewish hospital per se, like Sinai. But a lot of Jews did receive treatment there, in the days when the city's Christian hospitals for the most part wouldn't treat them. And, of course, the neighborhoods near the hospital had a large Jewish population from the '20s to the early '50s.

Herman Kiefer himself was an interesting person. He was born in what is now Germany, was medically trained there, and was a leader in the unsuccessful revolution of 1848. Like a lot of German revolutionary exiles he ended up in Detroit. An early member of the Republican party, he was a social activist writer and speaker, an advocate of workers rights, public education, and public health initiatives, and a strong opponent of slavery. He became a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan and a U of M Regent. Dr. Kiefer died just as Detroit's communicable disease hospital complex was being opened [[on the outskirts of the city, so that the patients could benefit from the fresh air), so naturally it was named for him.

[Ray1936]

Good stuff, Al. I learned something today.

[lovnlife]

In addition to vital records [[birth and death), the main building currently houses the Detroit Health Department [[now Health and Wellness Promotion) which includes a medical clinic, an STD clinic, maternal and child health programs, epidemiology, HIV prevention, dental services, family planning, etc. The smaller building to the south [[just off the service drive) at one time housed substance abuse treatment and referral services. http://www.ci.detroit.mi.us/Departme...3/Default.aspx

[eriedearie]

Every time I drive by there I am reminded of the period of time, in the mid 60s, that my uncle was hospitalized with tuberculosis while there. I remember driving my mother, father, my aunt, [[his wife) and their daughter to visit him. It seemed a very surreal place to me. Kind of spooky or something. I just could never put my finger on the feelings I got from being there.

[gazhekwe]

Polio patients were taken there in the 50s. My brother was there. Ward on ward of sick people, mostly kids. My parents were directed to a ward where everyone was in an iron lung. Fortunately my brother was not there, and was found down the hall in another ward standing in his crib screaming to go home. 1953 that was.

I think it was where all the communicable diseases were cared for, TB, whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever. Before HK, many of these patients were kept at home with huge "Quarantine" signs on their houses. No one could go in or out except the public health nurses and doctors.

[KOMPOST]

I am pretty sure Richard Marr designed the buildings and maybe even the entire complex. Marr married the granddaughter of Herman Kiefer so that explains it.

I always thought HK was straight up Albert Kahn. Sure looks like it.

[gnome]

http://famousamericans.net/hermankiefer/

Herman Kiefer




KIEFER, Herman, physician, born in Salzburg, Baden, Germany, 19 November, 1825. He was educated at Freiburg, Mannheim, and Carlsruhe, and studied medicine at Freiburg, Heidelberg, Prague, and Vienna, being graduated by the state board of examiners at Carlsruhe. He served as surgeon in the volunteer regiment of Emmendingen during the revolution of 1849, taking part in the battle of Philippsburg and Upstadt. He came to this country in September, 1849, and settled in Detroit, where he has since practised medicine. He has been actively interested in German-American affairs, and was a founder of the German-American seminary, of which he was president and treasurer from 1861 till 1872. In 1866-'7 he was a member of the Detroit board of education, and in 1882 he became a member of the public library commission, being re-elected in 1883 for a term of six years, and adding to the library a large collection of German works. He was chairman of the German Republican executive committee of Utica in 1854, a presidential elector in 1872, and a delegate to the Republican national convention of Cincinnati in 1876. In 1883 he was appointed by President Arthur United States consul to Stettin, which office he held till he resigned in 1885. He prepared valuable articles, which were published in the United States consular reports, and include " American Trade with Stettin," "How Germany is Governed," and " Labor in Europe."

[Danny]

Is Herman Keifer Jewish?

[eriedearie]

Gaz - now that you mention it, maybe that's why I've always felt uneasy about the place. I remember my aunt saying that if my uncle had not been admitted there...they would have had to have kept him at home where a sign would have been put up to quarantine anyone from going in or out of the house. That must have scared me. I remember thinking that my cousins wouldn't be able to go to school or do anything but stay in the house.

That building still conjures up the "willies" in me!

[exdetroiter]

I have an iry feeling on the occassions that I have had to go there. Its spooky.

[Hypestyles]

Soon, the operations there will officially switch over to the Institute for Population Health. only grant-funded service programs [[through federal, state or philanthropic grant) will continue..

[MidTownMs]

Back in the 50's I had an aunt to was at HK for TB...I remember after church every Sunday my parents took us there to see her. Since we couldn't go in we would wave at her from the sidewalk. She was there three or four years. When she got out she and my uncle tried to adopt a child but they were turned down because my aunt had been a TB patient. Over the years they were foster parents for over 50 kids in Detroit but were never able to adopt. I don't know exactly what they did when my aunt was there because she never talked about it when she got out.

[Brian1979]

The front of the building is actually on Taylor Street which runs into the service drive. It's in a pretty rough area though from what I remember, it's not too far from the riot zone in 67. It looks like a spooky building though.