Dayhoff Westminster: My next column in the Baltimore Sun will be on Henryton State Hospital http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

My next column in the Baltimore Sun will be on Henryton State Hospital http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/

Henryton State Hospital http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/

Kevin E. Dayhoff June 24, 2015

My next column in the Baltimore Sun - http://www.baltimoresun.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=Kevin+Dayhoff&target=all - will be on Henryton State Hospital. The following piece comes from edits that were left on the cutting room floor in order to make word limit.

Related Sykesville Firefighter: Bill Rehkopf – Another Fire At Abandoned Henryton Hospital Center December 19, 2007 http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2007/12/sykesville-firefighter-bill-rehkopf.html

http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/search/label/Henryton%20State%20Hospita - for all articles on Henryton

Labels: Carroll Co places, Henryton School of Piratical Nursing, Henryton State Hospital, Medicine Health

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The hospital was once a sprawling facility comprised of 19 buildings covering 30 acres in Marriottsville, about seven miles from Sykesville in southern Carroll County. It was closed by the state of Maryland in 1985.

This writer began looking into the history of the hospital in the early 1970s when it caught my attention during an assignment to research the history of hospitals in Carroll County for a project for what was then-Carroll County General Hospital.

Over the years, researching the history of hospital has difficult. What little information on the hospital that was found was often conflicting, inconsistent, and only appeared in anecdotal accounts; often without a comprehensive context. Many historians contacted in the 1970s were barely aware of the facility.

On June 20, 1947, the Democratic Advocate reported on “Three County Doctors Honored:” “Three physicians were honored for having given 50 years of service to citizens of Carroll county at the monthly luncheon meeting Tuesday of the Carroll County Medical Society at the Charles Carroll Hotel in Westminster. The vice president, Dr. Reuben Hoffman, superintendent of the Henryton Sanatorium, presided at the meeting…”

Then, in an undated entry discovered in the 1990s, in one of the several old histories of the Westminster Volunteer Fire Department, it is noted “Numerous members vividly recall a major alarm fire at the old Henryton Hospital near Sykesville. When Engine No 33 with nine volunteers were trapped in burning brush and forced to make a dash through the flames to safety…

According to an undated history of Henryton discovered by Historian Betty Jane Lee, “In the year 1918, the General Assembly of Maryland, Maryland's legislative body, authorized the construction of a tuberculosis sanatorium for Negro patients who were residents of Maryland. This sanatorium was established at Henryton in CarroIl County. It was opened in September of 1923. It is situated on the main line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad about 25 miles west of Baltimore and about seven miles from Sykesville.

“The original bed capacity was 88. In order to be admitted the person had to be a resident of Maryland for two years prior to the date of the application. Later on this was changed to one year. The terms were $3.50 per week for paying patients but the majority of beds were free…”

Multiple sources report that after a major reorganization of state government in 1963, Henryton was no longer utilized as a tuberculosis sanatorium, and along with Rosewood State Hospital; it was converted to a “developmental disabilities facility,” according to a Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties report prepared for the Maryland Historic Trust around June 2000.

In keeping with the difficulties researching the history of Henryton, to date no information has been found that supports the popular notion that the facility was once a psychiatric hospital.

According to an article in The Sun on April 1, 2013, “Inside the abandoned Henryton State Hospital,” “For years, the old Henryton State Hospital has sat abandoned in rural southeastern Carroll County as officials decide what to do next with the decaying psychiatric [sic]… facility. Closed since 1985, there have been 70 fires over the past decade, as the complex like others, falls victim to vandalism and deterioration.”

After the huge facility was closed and the last person leaving the buildings turned-off the lights; the state of Maryland walked-away and never looked back; wiped its hands of the place and left it to be painfully destroyed over the years by neglect. It did not even appear in the 1986 state budget.

Multiple sources define criminal neglect as “The failure to use reasonable care to avoid consequences that threaten or harm the safety of the public and that are the foreseeable outcome of acting in a particular manner.” If you look up criminal neglect in the dictionary and you see a picture of the state of Maryland’s maintenance of the huge complex.

In June 2013, the entire complex of 19 buildings was removed from the property at a cost of over $4 million. The entire property, totally 105 acres according to the Maryland Historic Trust, is to be absorbed into Patapsco Valley State Park. Kevin E. Dayhoff June 23, 2015

Dayhoff Westminster

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

My next column in the Baltimore Sun will be on Henryton State Hospital http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/

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