Old Folks & Bright Lights

In Detroit this week, architects are busy on plans to convert the bustling, downtown Park Avenue Hotel (240 rooms) into a home for the aged, to be run by the Salvation Army, and renamed Eventide Residence. The Roman Catholic Church has just finished converting the downtown Detroiter (750 rooms) into a rest home named Carmel Hall. In Dallas, eight blocks from the center of town, the 126-room Ambassador Hotel has become a residential hotel for the aged (part of a six-state, 13-hotel chain for old people). One of the specifications of a projected home in Atlanta is that it be readily accessible to downtown shops, services and entertainment. The new installations are part of a major, countrywide trend in geriatrics: putting the aged downtown near the bright lights.

"Our residents tell us it's all right to take them out to the cemetery when they're dead," says the Rev. Harry Wolf, director of Detroit's Luther Haven, located in a busy shopping area. "But in the meantime they want to stay near the activity of life." Adds Director Frank C. Selfridge of Evanston's James C. King Home: "They're not interested in the birds and the bees. They want to see the world go by." Doctors approve moving the old people downtown because it is a morale booster that staves off loneliness and boredom, makes the aged feel they still belong to society. Many of the homes allow the oldsters full freedom of action, without curfew. "We were really surprised when we noticed some of our people going out about 8:30 and staying out until 1," says one sister at Detroit's Carmel Hall. "We don't interfere. We worry sometimes, especially if they don't leave word they will be in late, but everything has worked out fine."

While many old-style rural homes are having trouble staying at 100% of capacity, those near the bright lights are besieged with more applicants than they can handle. Says Director Lois Slonaker, who has a waiting list of 200 women at Evanston's 115-place Alonzo Mather Home: "What people resent more than anything else in rural locations is the feeling of being put on the shelf and laid aside. Some of our women lead the social life of a debutante."

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