However, it may have been that by 1834 conditions at the hospital were such that it was unable to attract many private patients.) Spring One of the conditions of the lease was that 'the building be exclusively appropriated as a Hospital for the insane, and diseased persons of every description.' As noted above, a report of 1843 says that the cost had been $154,000. In the same tradition, in 1906 a separate building, constructed in back of the Main Building, was opened as a 'Cottage for Colored Women' (see above). Drawings and other reports indicate that the replacement structure (1839) almost identically resembled the original structure (1798), at least on the outside. The College of Medicine of Maryland was established in December, 1807. According to a number of sources, the disagreement was over the fact that the Sisters refused to recognize that the decisions of the hospital's physicians were 'supreme' in all clinical and administrative matters. The property, itself, has greatly enhanced in value, and can be sold for more than the land and improvements have cost the State, (from is commencement in 1797,) by which means, the treasury may be protected from the future cost of the completion of the new Asylum, now under construction, by Commissioners, who have that work in hand, and from whom we learn, the work may be regarded as one half completed and capable of full completion in one year, if appropriations are sufficiently large, and made at an early date. From an architectural point of view, it may be of some interest to note that the Tawes Building was the most recent example of an architectural tradition seen in so many of the other buildings that have served the Hospital in its history. It's not clear if this obligation referred to a debt that had somehow been acquired by the Confederate States of America for services rendered by the Maryland Hospital during the war or if it referred to a demand, during Reconstruction, for war retributions from the southern states. And there is again a psychiatric illness research facility in the same building where the LSD experiments once occurred. Thirty-six buildings on the grounds are still actively used. The Center is also the host site of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, a world-renowned research institution that focuses on identifying the causes and cure for schizophrenia. This same act required that 'one-half of [the Maryland Hospital]be appropriated to the accommodation of pauper lunatics of [the State of Maryland], who shall there be accommodated and treated at the expense of the county so sending such lunatic paupers; provided, the same shall not exceed one hundred dollars for each pauper lunatic so sent.' The report notes that nine of these patients were 'free' while one of them was 'a slave.' (See below. At the time, most of Maryland's seriously mentally ill, as well as those persons who were referred to as 'inebriates' (alcoholics) or as being 'feeble-minded' (mentally retarded), were kept in local jails and almshouses -- if they were poor or indigent, or were not able to be cared for at home. This is possibly because Dr. Sprigg-Steuart has remained a somewhat controversial figure -- primarily due to the fact that his loyalty to the United States was called into question during the U.S. Civil War because he may have been a southern sympathizer. However, it probably would not have been considered to have been a hospital. The report indicates that the use of the building had been offered at no cost to the 'Inebriate Asylum' by the State. Following the public outcry that was generated by the Maryland's Shame articles, the Maryland General Assembly allocated substantial funding for new construction and other physical plant improvements, along with money for better pay and significant infusions of new staff positions. The Main Building stood on the lot across the street from the current Spring Grove Administration Building, and extended north to beyond where the Jamison Building stands today. While debate as to whether to maintain two state hospitals or simply transfer the Maryland Hospital from its original site in Baltimore to the new site in Catonsville continued for most of the time that the new hospital was under construction. Preston Complex (originally known as the 'Men's Group,' for convalescent males), starting with the Preston Building, were built between 1962(Preston, Hill, Mitchell, Sullivan) and 1969 (Dix and Noyes). Hillcrest Building (also known as the 'Criminal Building') still stands on the campus of UMBC. Collectively, these articles have been come to be known as the 'Maryland's Shame' story. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Accordingly, following legal actions initiated by neighbors, the hospital was forced to abandon its original, rather simplistic, sewage disposal system shortly after the Main Building opened. Furthermore, many individuals, including Ms. Dix, had emphasized for a number of years that efforts to treat psychiatric patients in accordance with the principles of Moral Management (see below) were generally not practicable in the middle of a crowded, noisy, urban area. In the following year, 1808, the Public Hospital of Baltimore was renamed 'the City Hospital' after a pair of local physicians, Drs. He and several other members of the Hospital's Board of Visitors were replaced during the Civil War after they refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the Union. In the 1870s, the Hospital experimented with the use of colored lights and walls to treat or aid in the management of certain psychiatric conditions. In 1838 the hospital was again renamed, this time to 'The Maryland Hospital for the Insane,' one year before the General Assembly passed legislation that specified that the Maryland Hospital was only to accept psychiatric patients. However, the decision seems to have been essentially made by the late 1860s. ), Although Spring Grove was formally founded as a hospital in 1797, it actually can trace its roots back to a predecessor institution that began three years earlier, in 1794, during the second presidential term of George Washington. The presence of an abundance of mosquito-breeding wetlands in the environs and a generally warm climate led to a number of Yellow Fever Epidemics at the turn of the nineteenth century - and the decision to construct a public hospital was clearly partially related to this circumstance. Various improvements were made to the Maryland Hospital during the 1850s and 1860s. Crownsville's very first patients were 16 African-American men who were transferred from Spring Grove in 1911. In the first place a new Hospital would require more time before it could be made useful than a colony directed from this place. Under the provisions of the State Government Reorganization Act of 1922, Spring Grove was placed administratively within the Maryland Department of Welfare and under that department's Board of Welfare (Acts of 1922, art. The building was heated by hot water pipes that ran to it from the nearby (and still extant) Boiler House that was located immediately to the building's west. Patients and staff joined together to form social clubs and musical groups. The 110-year-old Main Building, which in it's later years was sometimes articles manufactured and 18,579 items repaired by patients. Springfield still operates as a mental health facility. Furthermore, it was not specifically designated to treat psychiatric patients and it was not publicly funded or operated (although it seems that it did accept indigent patients). Spring Grove Hospital Center was founded in 1797 and is the second oldest psychiatric hospital in the United States (The oldest being Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia, which was founded in 1773). On January 1, 1853 the Hospital also had 10 African-American Patients (six men and four women). floor plans of the building, c.1853, indicate that indoor plumbing and 'water closets' (flushing toilets) were part of the original design. At the time, most of Maryland's seriously mentally ill, as well as those persons who were referred to as 'inebriates' (alcoholics) or as being 'feeble-minded' (mentally retarded), were kept in local jails and almshouses -- if they were poor or indigent, or were not able to be cared for at home. Today, the Dayhoff Building, the White Building, and portions of the Stone Cottages are located on land that was part of the 1909 'Sunnyside' farm acquisition and not, as might be imagined, part of the hospital's original parcel of land, acquired in 1853. In addition to his abolition of the use of mechanical restraints, Dr. Gundry fenced the Hospital's grounds and opened them to regular access by the majority of the patients. Instead, records suggest that certain patients were admitted and remained primarily because they were poor, homeless, elderly or physically ill. The lights have been attached to the present gas fixtures, with the addition of some new fixtures. Here, scientists tested LSD and other chemicals as potential treatments for psychiatric illnesses until national controversy caught up with everybody and the research was shut down in 1976. For example, a passage from a report made in 1836, pursuant to an inspection that had been ordered by the Maryland House of Delegates, reads: 'one portion, (the west wing of the building) [is] in such a state of decay, that a few years more will scarce leave a stone of its structure remaining. Between 1920 and 1925 some 325 soldiers and sailors were treated in 'Foster Clinic' (now center and east wings of the As recently as the late1950s, Spring Grove had as many as 3,400patients at any given time, and the 'construction boom' at Spring Grove continued into the 1960s.The This cottage seems to have been the first public hospital building in Maryland specifically for the treatment of mentally ill African-American patients. However, the State of Maryland did continue to exert some control over the hospital -- for example by making certain appointments to its board of directors. Records indicate that the old hospital, which by then was situation on 13-acres, was sold to Mr. Hopkins in 1870 for the sum of $150,000, although the net proceeds of the sale were only $133,318.67, after several deductions were made. As noted above, additional land was acquired at around this time, and the hospital was again expanded. 1. On that date, there were at total of 36 patients at the hospital -- 26 of whom were termed 'lunatics' and 10 of whom were referred to as 'ordinary patients.' Spring Grove has a history far deeper than the experimental 1960s. To view a transcript of the rules that governed the use of seclusion and restraint at Spring Grove in 1951, click HERE.. the western most section of the hospital's west wing, was demolished and rebuilt. According to the Maryland Hospital's Annual Report for 1872 and 1873, when the hospital sold its property in Baltimore to Johns Hopkins in 1870 it owed $120,439.73 on past-due invoices for Spring Grove-related constructions costs. In a manner perhaps consistent with modern industry practices, the annual reports from the early 1840s seemed to have painted a somewhat misleadingly rosy picture of life at the institution. A proposal to build two large additions, one at the southern end of each of the existing wings, was briefly considered. The hospital's annual report to the Governor in 1876 indicates that restraints were applied to about 2% of the patient population. In the middle 1950's, Spring Grove became one of the first three state hospitals in the United States to become accredited by the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Hospitals (now the JCAHO). It may originally have been referred to as the 'Maryland State Lunatic Asylum [at] Spring Grove.' Veterans Administration Hospital at Perry Point) at Perry Point, Maryland. Other treatment interventions used in psychiatric hospitals duringthis period included the administration of various medications, including opioids (such as Laudanum) and other sedatives, and warm and cold baths. Get Directions CONTACT For about a period of time after the State resumed full control in 1834, physician services at the hospital were provided by a number of Baltimore physicians, including John Mackinzie -- each of whom were to have served gratuitously for one year. In addition, the hospital's operating rooms and other non-psychiatric medical services were located in the Foster Wade Building, prior to the erection of the Garrett Building in 1932. Cascara Cordial was a mild laxative. This facility dates all the way back to 1911, when it opened as the Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland. At the same time, a number of factors, including significant improvements in staffing ratios, new construction and closer affiliations with academic institutions such as the University of Maryland resulted in substantial improvements in the quality of the services provided by the hospital. However, several annual reports from the end of the 19th-century Between 1798 and 1807, according to at least one source, Captain Yellott and his associates may have continued to manage the hospital, under an agreement with the City of Baltimore. Massachusetts. This year's gingerbread house in the Haunted Mansion's ballroom scene will feature a nearly 10-foot-tall edible version of the venerable haunted house with a man-eating wreath on the front. Furthermore, the report says that, because of the war, 'the South' owed the hospital a debt of 'over $2,000.' superintendent of the hospital in 1878, whereupon a number of reforms were implemented. In co-operation with the social reformer Dorothea Dix, who in 1852 gave an impassioned speech to the Maryland legislature, Steuart chaired the committee that selected the hospital's present site in Catonsville, and he personally contributed $1,000 towards the purchase of the land. (Delusional Disorder, PsychoticDepressions, and Paranoid Schizophrenia. Although leased to Drs Mackenzie and Smythe, who controlled the day-to-day operations of the hospital, both the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland maintained at least titular oversight powers during this period -- and both entities continued to provide some of the hospital's funding. (A brief history of the hospital, published in the 1843 'Report of the President and Board of Visitors [of the Maryland Hospital]' includes a passage that reads: '-- and to the honor of these gentlemen [Mackenzie and Smythe] it should be known that a large sum, amounting to $60,000, was furnished from their profits and other private resources to carry out fully their benevolent plans, making an entire expenditure of $154,000, up to this period of the history of the Institution.') [9], In May 2022, Governor Larry Hogan's administration proposed transferring the hospital campus to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for $1. Other sources indicate that it was already called Spring Grove at the time that it was acquired in 1852. Pennhurst State School and Hospital, Spring City Pennhurst State School was in operation for around fifty years during the first half of the 20 th century. It is not clear if the above picture of the hospital, as shown on a map of Baltimore in 1801, is the same building that housed Captain Yellott's Retreat (c. 1794) or if it is the c.1798 structure that followed the founding of the hospital in 1797. There are now fifteen colored insane in the hospital -- seven males and eight females, and three others have been received since the date of this Report. Additional promenades and landscaping features were added. outbuildings.). The Red Brick Apartments were constructed in 1951, and the At first, the new facility at Spring Grove seems to have been racially integrated. So called 'General Patients' were housed in the next echelon back, and more disturbed or 'violent' patients tended were placed on the units that were the farthest back from the center section. On May 18, 2022, ownership of Spring Grove Hospital Center was transferred to University of Maryland Baltimore County with plans by the Maryland Department of Health to lease the . Although today it is difficult for some of us to understand why the historic significance and architectural merit of the Main Building didn't save it from the wrecking ball back in 1963, the fact is that, in 1963, the building was structurally unsound, was justifiably considered to have been a "firetrap," and was felt to have been beyond reasonable repair. Pop Medicine > Pop Medicine The 10 Most Haunted Hospitals in America Former nursing home, TB hospital, and psychiatric facilities round out the list. 55 Wade Avenue, Catonsville, Maryland 21228 USA410.402.6000. Spring Grove Hospital Center was founded in 1797 and is the second oldest psychiatric hospital in the United States. The Board of Managers was abolished and its authority transferred to the new superintendent appointed by the commissioner of Mental Hygiene. Laundry Building. Vision Spring Grove Hospital will be recognized as a national leader for excellence in psychiatric care, research and education. Provision should be made for them, without delay, by building a separate accommodation for them in connection with a hospital for the insane. This action, of course, raised the specter of the State losing its entire investment through foreclosure should the General Assembly continue to refuse to appropriate additional funding. For example, it was noted that the water An advantage of the Maryland Hospital site in Baltimore was that it was located on high grounds (there had recently been a flood in Baltimore that had destroyed many of the lower-lying parts of the city that bordered the Jones Falls). These repairs evidently included the purchase of about three additional acres of land; the subdivision of two large, open wards on upper floors of the east wing into private rooms; the replacement of the (tin) roof of the 'center' portion of the building; improvements in the wall that surrounded the hospital (to prevent escapes and to enhance privacy); and the demolition and complete rebuilding of the section of the west wing that had at one time been the original hospital building; i.e., the c. 1798 hospital structure that, through a series of modifications and additions over a period of more than 30-years had become the western-most section of the west wing of the hospital. A heavy emphasis was placed upon the healing power of restful sleep, and, accordingly, patients were segregated by illness and level of activity so that the more disturbed patients were less likely to interrupt the rest of those patients who were recovering. of Public Works OK's Controversial $1 Lease for State Psychiatric Hospital Grounds", http://www.leaguelineup.com/welcome.asp?url=shep, "Spring Grove State Hospital" by David S. Helsel, M.D. However, a condition of the will was that only interest from the endowment could be used for the construction and, therefore, the Hospital's trustees had to carefully limit the rate of construction, so as not to spend more than the annual income from the endowment. *This four-year absence refers to the fact that the Board of Visitors of the Maryland Hospital had been replaced in 1864, during the third year of the Civil War, after most members refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the Union. Additional information about Maryland's history (including additional information about Maryland's public mental health system) is available through their web site: Male patients resided on the north wing of the building (known as the 'Male Department) and female patient were housed in the south wing (known as the 'Female Department.') The report also indicates that there was significant disagreement over funding for furnishings and operating costs. The Main Building's design was based upon the work of Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, who served the Pennsylvania Hospital as superintendent from 1841-1883. Complicating the situation was the fact that the same stream was used to empty and carry off wastes from the hospital's sewers and since as much as three-quarters of the fresh water was being diverted into the hospital's plumbing system, the remaining volume of water in the stream was insufficient to efficiently carry-off the waste water that was being piped into it. The center is owned and operated by the State of Maryland, and is under the . On the other hand, Spring Grove's As noted above, politics came to the fore again when the original commissioners were reappointed (Acts of 1868). Early reports indicate that by that time the abandoned roadbed of the 'The (Old) Joppa Road' (also known as the Old Road to Philadelphia) -- directly to the north of the original hospital building -- had already been purchased by the Hospital. He also designed the Hilltop Chapel at Green Mount Cemetery, and the Grace and St. Peter's Church (Park Avenue at Monument St.), both in Baltimore. He learned the art of bandaging while a medic during the First World War.) To begin with, the fresh water source was one of the hospital's spring-fed streams. (Note: Crownsville Hospital Center closed in 2004 and most of its patient were transferrred to Spring Grove. As noted above, an interesting part of the hospital's history is the fact that, despite its designation as a hospital for the care and treatment of 'lunatics,' a primary impetus to the State's decision to fund the facility in 1798 seems to have been a yellow fever epidemic that led to the death of 1,200 people in Baltimore that same year. In the early 1890s, the Hospital's medical superintendent, Dr. George Roh, published data that he believed pointed to afavorable effect of total hysterectomies on the psychiatric conditions of a series of female patients at Spring Grove. The men's industrial shop produced durable goods such as trousers, coats, vests, overalls, boots, shoes, wicker settees and other pieces of furniture, brooms, baskets and tents. As head of the Chancery Court, the chancellor had the authority to commit to the facility those individuals who were referred to in the law as 'any lunatic, idiot or person insane.' Not only were there insufficient funds to allow for the completion of the Hospital, there was not enough money to repay debts incurred to pay for some of the work that had already been completed. The purchase was completed in 1853, but construction of the new buildings was delayed by the Civil War, and the hospital was not finally completed until 1872,[5] when it was described by one contemporary as "one of the largest and best appointed Insane Asylums in the United States".[6]. (Acts of 1813). Other than (Note: The Dix and Noyes Buildings, also in the Preston Complex, were built in 1969.)