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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
