Friday, June 24, 2022

Check into Grace Hospital at Historic Detroit

The website Historic Detroit has a page devoted to Grace Hospital. It gives a brief history of the hospital and its most famous patient. It also includes a link to a page of photos, most of which I've never seen. Some terrific images, including the below. Houdini's last stop.


Grace Hospital's final day of operation was December 3, 1976 (which happened to be my 12th birthday). But the building remained standing and even saw seances inside room 401 where Houdini died. It was finally demolished in 1979 to make way for a new hospital on the site. Unfortunately, I've never been able to find the exact day or even the month of its demolition. Can anyone help?

Speaking of Grace and room 401, in 2007 a series aired on MTV called Room 401. While the series didn't have anything to do with Houdini specifically, the title is a reference to the room in which he died. How did I not know about this until now?


You can see photos of the real room 401 and read a personal recollection of Grace Hospital by Bob Franke, Jr. at the Houdini Museum of Scranton's website HERE.

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10 comments:

  1. Is Bob Franke, Jr still alive? magicus@comcast.net

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    1. Would love to know that myself. Maybe we could get larger photos.

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  2. Amazing to think the actual bed on which Houdini died was still in use 50 years later in ‘76. And neither private collectors nor the Houdini museum sought to acquire? Terrific article John; I enjoy your research and insights as they help to show the man behind the legend.

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    1. It seems impossible that it would be the same mattress, right? But likely the same frame. It's hard to tell from the pics, but it looks like it could be built in.

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  3. Room 401...it's the top floor of the building.

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    1. Nicely observed, Leo. I never thought about this.

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    2. Neither did I, then I saw the photo you posted of the front of the hospital. It's only four floors.

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  4. Love this image, wow! My friend Wayne Alan, visited the hospital room before it was demolished. He took the air vent cover from the room and has it in his collection. I have a photo on my site. BTW, notice the stairs in the photo, just shows the 'time period' this was taken. Now there would be a ramp, or both stairs and a ramp. I have a feeling this building was torn down before that law was put into effect.

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  5. I
    Greetings from across the pond I am getting a error message for museum any help thanks

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    1. The Houdini Museum has been having issues with their website. Looks like the link isn't working anymore. Unfortunately, nothing we can do on our end.

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