Look across the street. The entire city block in front of you was once the Mount Pleasant Center for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities. It was the last state hospital for people with disabilities in Michigan. Thankfully, progressive laws have ensured that people with DD are able to live in their communities now. At the same time, however, many people lost jobs when the Center closed. The sad and controversial history of the Center began with it being used to educate Native American students, taken from their families, in the 1800s. Read below for more information.
You are looking for a micro metalic cache across the street from the Center. The actual grounds are off limits to trespassers.
From The Morning Sun, 5/20/12
"On the grounds, very few buildings remain that existed when the Indian Industrial School opened for Native American students in 1893. As part of the June 6 Remembrance Day for the Industrial School, we will focus on the history of the Indian Boarding School that existed from 1893 to 1933, a controversial part of our area’s history. The history of the contemporary Mt. Pleasant Center begins in 1934, when the grounds were converted from a boarding school for Native American children to a ‘farm colony,’ as it was called at the time, for the Lapeer State Home and Training School. A video titled ‘A Facility History for the Mt. Pleasant Regional Center for Developmental Disabilities, produced by the InService Training Department for the Mt. Pleasant Center in the late 1970s or early 80s, has a handwritten title card and video footage and early photographs along with a general history. The video is available for viewing at the Clarke Historical Library, along with many other materials related to the facility.
When the facility reopened in 1934 as the Michigan Home and Training School, the care of the developmentally disabled was much different than today’s standards. The first residents were men from the state home in Lapeer who provided labor to operate the farm and dairy operations at the facility, and were available for hire by community members for day jobs. At this time, the only hospital located in Mt. Pleasant existed at the ‘Michigan Home,’ the terms used by locals at the time for the Mt. Pleasant Center. In 1946 the institution was renamed Mt. Pleasant State Home and Training School.
Research at the Clarke Historical Library shows the time between the opening of the facility in 1934 until the reforms in Special Education laws and practices in the 1960s and 70s made for a dark time at the facility. Care was confined to only food and shelter. Efficiency over anything else was emphasized during this time, and living conditions did not meet the space and privacy requirements of today. Residents were handled in groups of up to 50, and photos show dormitories filled with wall-to-wall beds in day rooms that slept 50 to a room. A building spree happened in the 1950s, with buildings designed to provide a custodial level of care in the most expedient manner. Many of the buildings still in existence on the grounds today were constructed during this time.
Liberal admissions policies during the early decades required only the signatures of two doctors saying that a person was ‘retarded.’ Due to this, many residents were ‘quite capable people’ according to the InService Training Department video.
Cottage 3 was converted by a Detroit architect in 1950 to what was known as the Crib Care dormitory, and had wall-to-wall cribs on two of its three floors, with toddlers in the basement. More than 200 infants and children with varying degrees of disability were housed there, with 25% of the children diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. Care at that time, being limited to food and shelter, led to the young residents not getting enough exercise to maintain muscle tone and mobility.
As late as the 1960s, one-piece coveralls were the uniform for all patients. Around that time, staff ‘on its own initiative’ started attempting to work with residents in small groups, or one on one, with planned activities or arts and crafts on a limited basis. The first teachers arrived at the facility in 1966, when Public Law 89-10 made provisions for providing teachers to the institutionalized handicapped. In the 1970s an extensive renovation program was held, and the institution was renamed the Mt. Pleasant Regional Center for Developmental Disabilities. The renovations focused on making the facility less institutional and more homelike. The interiors were changed from large day rooms housing groups of 50 to apartments holding no more than 16 residents, with snack kitchens. Family dining over institutional feeding was introduced. The Special Education Law of 1974 required that all persons under age 26 who were capable of being transported must be able to attend school, and programs were created individually by interdisciplinary teams for those over age 26, for work activities or sheltered employment. Community-based residential living began to be emphasized at this time, allowing for group home setups in the surrounding neighborhoods. Admissions began to decline as the push for community integration began.
The grounds of the Mt. Pleasant Center today show no evidence of the dark times in its history. Many of the buildings we toured were contemporary and some were in decent shape, albeit with the air of abandonment and musty air that comes with vacancy. There were no shackles in sight, as I was told I would see. We were able to tour the Hospital Administration Building, Power Plant, Laundry Building, Maintenance Building, Service Building (kitchen and food storages), Rehabilitation Services Building and residential Cottage 7, and also walk the entire grounds. Black mold, asbestos and crumbling interiors made the other existing residential cottages unsafe to enter on the tour. Like writers of the other articles in this series on the history and fate of the Mt. Pleasant Center property, I was struck by the way employees and residents seemed to have set down what they were doing at the time, and left. Projects left half-finished, coats left hanging on pegs, stacks of folded laundry on carts, shoes in a locker. Time appears to have stopped when the facility closed in 2009.
As one would imagine, many sad things happened in the past on those grounds, but progress happened as well. At one time the Mt. Pleasant Center was the fourth biggest provider of jobs in Mt. Pleasant. Currently, it is a small abandoned city sitting at the north edge of this town, waiting for the next chapter."