In the late twenties and early thirties the tuberculosis rate among African Americans in Maryland was quadruple the rate among whites. However, by the time the new buildings were completed in , the tuberculosis rates had dropped, leaving much more room than was necessary. The hospital was not, in fact, used as a facility to treat the "criminally insane," contrary to the popular belief. The location, and layout, combined with the almost total lack of security, not to mention the complete lack of anything remotely resembling prisoner enclosures, would not have been conducive to the complex serving as even a minimum security facility.
At the time the hospital reopened in , there were residents living at Henryton out of the allowable The rehabilitation program was a great success and returned many of its patients to their respective communities and some to the workforce. Admission to the hospital was covered by the Mental Retardation Administration, a division of Maryland Special Services, for new patients and through the Rosewood State Hospital for patients already receiving care elsewhere.
Henryton also ran a respite care program with admission by special request. In , Hurricane Agnes swept away the Henrytown Bridge which served the facility and Henrytown road since the early s.
The American mindset in the late seventies and early eighties shifted from institutionalization to more outpatient and home care which led to decreasing resident numbers at Henryton. The Maryland DHMH decided to end the training program in because of the low numbers of enrollment and residents. In , Henryton had fewer than resident patients and operations at the center were being phased out.
Established in by Chapter , Acts of , Henryton State Hospital is located in a wooded, steeply sloped rural area in the southeast corner of the County. In July of the hospital was transferred to the Department of Mental Hygiene and was converted to a special training and habilitation program for severely retarded, ambulatory adults.
Admission was handled through Rosewood State Hospital. Occupancy was to be once when conversion was completed. Henryton closed in Abandoned sites have no real form of protection - from vandalism, from theft, from arson. I wish I could publicize locations of sites and only people who are careful and reverent would visit them, but there is no such filter on the internet. Because of that, I wish all respectful and reverent people could have come to this place and see firsthand the devastation that careless posting of information on message boards and photo sites does.
There was a point, long ago, when Henryton was whole. Visiting Henryton got harder every year. I look back now and think, I should have taken more pictures! Even in its miserable condition, it was still as worthy of documentation as anything.
Like many places I've seen get trashed over the years, I start to tell myself that the place I am visiting is too far gone, that with all the vandalism it's not worth it - and to an extent, who knows, maybe that's correct.
The question then becomes whether what I'm looking for is a 'pristine' ruin, whether there is merit in photographing an often-photographed place, and perhaps what the usefulness is of showing what really happens as time wears on. It was situated on the main line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and was demolished in In , the General Assembly of Maryland decided on the need to build a tuberculosis sanatorium for local African Americans.
Such a sanatorium was initially named the Center of the Henryton State Hospital, but it was also sometimes called the Henryton Tuberculosis Sanatorium. In , the construction of the sanatorium began, with the project being supervised by the Maryland Mental Hygiene Council.
The hospital was one of the first mental health facilities in Maryland that was built for African Americans and offered them the same level of treatment as white people. However, not everyone agreed that it was beneficial. Some felt that the hospital was used to exile tuberculosis patients rather than offer them suitable treatments. Six main buildings and one utility factory were opened for use in However, construction continued even while those sections were in operation and the entire hospital was fully opened in September According to Maryland statistics, in the early s, the number of African Americans with tuberculosis was four times greater than the number of white people who were sick.
Consequently, the hospital struggled to cope with the growing number of patients and it was necessary to increase its capacity.
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