Detroit Osteopathic Hospital
The Detroit Osteopathic Hospital began in 1919 on the corner of 3rd Avenue and Highland Street. Originally a house, it was converted and had only 38 beds. As the population grew, expansions became necessary. Renovations and additions were regular until the 1970s.
The hospital's 2-story Phillip Gray Memorial unit was completed in 1937, increasing its capacity. Amenities included a modern X-ray facility, surgical wards, an operating room, and a communication system. As the building was being completed, plans were starting to be drawn up for a new expansion that added offices and another 2-story patient wing in 1943.
As Highland Park grew, the hospital expanded several times during the 1950s, adding new buildings and additional floors to existing ones. The original homes that made up the hospital were demolished during these expansions and replaced by an 8-story tower in 1955. The Detroit Osteopathic Hospital became a network, building hospitals in Trenton and Warren.
By the 1960s, the city of Highland Park had stopped growing, but healthcare needs continued to increase. In 1966, a parking garage was built to the north of the hospital, and in 1967, an office building for doctors was built. The last addition was a two-story ambulatory wing on the west side of the complex, built from 1975 to 1977. Part of the older hospital was also renovated during this time.
Detroit Osteopathic continued to expand its health care through the 1980s, including emergency care, dialysis, medical imaging, and mental health treatment. It was the second largest employer in Highland Park, with over 700 workers monitoring over 220 patient beds.
Though the hospital was profitable in 1990, it lost money through 1991 and again in 1992. Detroit Osteopathic had a death rate that was higher than the state average, and employees had started to look for new jobs, sensing that change was coming. By the middle of that year, Horizon Health Systems had opened negotiations with Detroit-Macomb Hospital Corporation to sell the hospital, but it had stopped accepting new patients. When DMHC purchased Detroit Osteopathic for $2.5 million in December, its primary interest was in the hospital's doctors and their patients. The company had opened Detroit Riverview Hospital on Jefferson Avenue just six years earlier, but the modern facility was underused and losing money. Closing Detroit Osteopathic and moving the hospitals' doctors to Riverview paid off for DMHC in the short term, as the doctors took patients, which bolstered the company's finances and brought the hospital closer to capacity.
Detroit Osteopathic Hospital closed its doors on December 18th, 1992. DMHC had initially planned on demolishing part or all of the hospital and budgeted $2 million on top of the sale price to cover the expenses. But for whatever reason, demolition work never started. Instead, parts of the hospital remained open, including the doctor's office building on the north side, which became a health clinic. Most of the medical and surgical equipment was auctioned off, ending up at other local hospitals.
For most of the 1990's the main building was vacant. Then, in 2004, the hospital building got a new lease on life when part of it was renovated and reopened as the Business Entrepreneurship, Science, Technology Academy - or BEST Academy. The first three floors of the west side of the complex were cleared and renovated into classrooms, while the fourth floor was used for storage. While there were early plans to convert the remaining wings of the hospital, this never went beyond the planning stage, and the eastern wings were bricked off and left to fall into ruin as scrappers and vandals found their way in.
Scrapping was more expansive than the old hospital, though. On at least one occasion in 2007, the school was forced to close for two days after the telephone lines stopped working. When the school principal went into the tunnels under the building to investigate, he was "startled by a man with pliers and a black suitcase with wheels, copper wire spilling from it," according to the Michigan Chronicle. The principal tied up the copper thief until the police arrived.
Though the school opened with some promise, parent feedback was mainly negative, and BEST Academy closed in the summer of 2012.
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*Sources:
https://detroiturbex.com/content/healthandsafety/osteo/index.html
https://99wfmk.com/abandoned-detroit-osteopathic/
