For example, he served as one of a series of principal architects who were responsible for the design of the known as 'The Center Building' or 'The Administration Building,' was razed in 1963. Eastern State Hospital of Virginia, no psychiatric hospital is older than Spring Grove. May 15, 2022 at 5:11 p.m. EDT. The 1836 report does indicate that the facility was clean, and that the patients were generally well cared for. The property was located east of Market Street (later, Broadway), on a road known at various times as the 'Old Road to Philadelphia' and 'the (Old) Joppa Road.' 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. 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.' Dorothea Dix, the outspoken advocate and crusader for the mentally ill, pointed to the inadequacy of the bed capacity of the Maryland Hospital for the Insane in her 1852 impassioned address before the Maryland General Assembly. As noted above, the Maryland Hospital buildings reportedly were very poor condition at the time that the institution was relocated to Spring Grove -- and there were major structural problems, including problems with the heating and plumbing systems. Records from the period indicate that by 1861 the 'center building' (the central section of the new hospital building) was raised to the second floor, and the foundation of the South Wing (the section to the left in the above drawing) had already been laid. A number of local newspapers, including the [Baltimore] Sun, were known to have contributed subscriptions to the hospital's patients. [9], In May 2022, Governor Larry Hogan's administration proposed transferring the hospital campus to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for $1. 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. I was working in the NICU which happened to also be on the fourth floor but on the opposite side. Some sources indicate that a dedicated building was erected specifically for the purpose by Captain Yellott in 1794. Work on the building stopped in 1862 and was not resumed until 1868. However, it does seem reasonable to assume that, if it survived, it may have eventually become one of the hospital's outbuildings. (Similar immunity had previously been granted to the Maryland Hospital, but could not be transferred to a new owner.) Of note is the fact that the referenced portion of the west wing was the structure that had been the original, c. 1798 building. On our tour, well see the remnants of the oldest building on campus, industrial structures from the 1930s, plus a barely noticeable cemetery. Not much information exists today about Captain Yellott's Retreat. Contemporary references to the demolition of the 'original hospital' in the late 1830s are confusing in that the 1839 demolition of the 'original hospital' referred only to the demolition and replacement of just that portion of the west wing that had been the original hospital building in 1798. In its long history it has been variously known as The Baltimore Hospital, The Maryland Hospital, The Maryland Hospital for the Insane, and finally as The Spring Grove Hospital Center. It is too small, and too defective in its construction. 'The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children 26 (1892): 694-726.] 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 the two years between 1834 and 1836, the patient population grew to 54 individuals -- 42 psychiatric patients, and 12 general patients. His heirs founded the Gundry Hospital, a nearby facility that provided inpatient psychiatric treatment to women. As noted above, contemporary reports indicate that when the State resumed full operating control of the hospital in 1834 it found that the building that housed it had been permitted to fall into serious disrepair. 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. The individual units on each wing were arranged in a progressive set-back configuration, a system that allowed for the classification of patients by level of functioning, and kept the various levels of care ("Violent Female," "General Female," "Convalescent Female," "Violent Male," "General Male" and "Convalescent Male" ) fairly separate from each other. The State of Maryland pledges to provide constituents, businesses, customers, and stakeholders with friendly and courteous, timely and responsive, accurate and consistent, accessible and convenient, and truthful and transparent services. Furthermore, any renewal of the lease was subject to the execution of a commitment by Drs. Evidently, the agreement was that the Inebriate Asylum could operate in the completed north wing of the Spring Grove site until the rest of the building could be completed and the psychiatric patients from the Maryland Hospital for the Insane at Baltimore could be transferred to into it. Steuart's buildings were demolished in 1963, replaced by more modern construction. However, these accounts seem to be specious. In 1911, the hospital treated 597 patients (though not all at one time). Furthermore, neighbors downstream complained of the smell and the fact that the stream was now heavily contaminated with raw sewage. Although the Hospital had always provided housing for staff members (both in the patient care buildings and elsewhere, both on and off the grounds), there was a major push in the 1940s and early 1950s to increase the number of housing units available for staff. Smith Building (also known as the 'Medical/Surgical Building') was constructed in 1975, and the Many of the patients are forensic court ordered with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene testifying before the General. It was later echoed at the Spring Grove site by the Main Building (1852), the Foster-Wade Building (1914 and 1926), the Bland-Bryant Building (1930), and, more recently, the Tawes Building (1962.) Sadly, the "Old Main" was demolished in 1964, and all that's left of the original complex is the Boiler House - the northern section of today's laundry building. It seems clear that it must have always been Captain Yellott's intent to convince the State and local governments to aid him in his efforts to build a larger hospital to replace his Retreat. Red Brick Cottages (1950s). However, Spring Grove RN's who do not wish to apply for this this national certification can participate in the Spring Grove Hospital Center Psychiatric Nursing Certification program. Despite the less than ideal circumstances for African-American patients at Spring Grove in the 19th and early 20th Century, conditions were far worse in the almshouses and jails -- where many mentally ill African-American Maryland citizens were confined. outbuildings.). (This represented more than a four-fold increase in the size of its acreage when compared to its original size of 136 acres. However, records from the early 1890s indicate that the Spring Grove executive staff lobbied against the creation of a second administratively independent State psychiatric hospital. During Dr. Garrett's tenure (1927 - 1935) the patient population of Spring Grove more than doubled. sewing room for women. In a report dated January 12, 1870, Dr. R. S. Steuart, the hospital's chief executive officer, summarized the bases of the decision to sell and abandon the Baltimore site and to move all of the hospital's operations to the 'new Hospital' as follows: (Taken from the Forty-First Report of the President and Visitors of the Maryland Hospital for the Insane, Baltimore, for 1868 and 1869). When our [alcoholic] patients go into it, they will be its first occupants. The Hillcrest Building (see above) wasalso constructed in the 1920s. A variant of the Protestant Work Ethic, the tenets of Moral Management held that seriously ill psychiatric patients will improve when provided structure, dignity, security, a pastoral living environment, social outlets, outdoor work, opportunities for regular outdoor exercise, wholesome food, spiritual guidance, and cleanly, orderly surroundings. The plumbing in the bathrooms was immediately found to be of 'an inferior grade,' and had to be completely replaced within a few years, and early reports also note that a $4,000 upgrade in the heating system was necessary after it was found to have been grossly inadequate during the first winter the building was occupied by the hospital. The hospital is now officially known as Spring Grove Hospital Center (renamed in 1973) and under the governance of the Mental Hygiene Administration, the facility operates 330 beds and provides advanced inpatient psychiatric services to approximately 1000 patients every year. Later it became a whites-only facility. The Main Building had a However, the Board of Visitors also recognized that if the hospital used all of the proceeds from the sale of the Baltimore property (a net of just $133,318.67) to pay the overdue bills for the construction that had been completed at Spring Grove to date (an amount that, as noted above, was over $120,000), there wouldn't be enough money left over to finish the hospital -- or to even finish enough of it so that at least a section of it could occupied as a hospital. However, the hospital's annual report of 1875 does note that a ward of the hospital was set aside specifically to treat 'inebriates.'. Cascara Cordial was a mild laxative. In 1794, Spring Grove's predecessor facility, the Retreat, seems to have been the very first freestanding health facility in Baltimore. It should be noted that according to oral tradition, not all African-American patients were transferred to Crownsville in between 1911 and 1913; evidently certain patients remained at Spring Grove because they held unique or indispensable work-skills. For example, it was noted that a number of counties (Allegany, Calvert, Dorchester and Prince George's) collectively owed the hospital $1,489.05. 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. Jamison Building in 1981. 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]. The Hillcrest Building (1921), the In the following year, 1871, the General Assembly did pass a law that provided Mr. Hopkins with the protection that he requested, on the condition that the property be used as a hospital and for no other purpose. Its wooden floor joists, some of which dated back to 1853, reportedly were rotten and at risk of collapsing; and it's heating, plumbing and electrical systems were dangerously outdated. Please turn on JavaScript and try again. Steuart's brother, Major General George H. Steuart, had two sons who had mental illness,[7] and it is possible that this was one of the causes of Steuart's particular interest in Spring Grove Hospital and the treatment of mental illness. As part of an effort to help Drs. Subsequently, the General Assembly passed a law which created a commission to 'select and purchase' a tract of land for the purpose of 'erecting a 200- to 250-bed hospital for the insane' (Acts of 1852).Although Ms. Dix is deservedly given much of the credit for the General Assembly's decision to authorize and fund the construction of a new facility, it should be noted that her lobbying efforts were made after she learned that there was already a formal proposal for a new hospital in Maryland. However, several annual reports from the end of the 19th-century In addition to the Main Building, buildings at Spring Grove that represented or evoked the Kirkbride plan included such buildings as the PennHurst, the legendary haunted hospital complex has opened its doors after 25 years and is accepting new patients! Market Street (now called Broadway) was to its west. A 1819 drawing of the hospital clearly shows that the hospital building -- including the Centre Building, and both the east and west wings -- had been completed by that date. unless the organs involved were found to have been diseased. Some early records indicate that certain patients were permitted 'to go partially at large.' In any event, it is clear that it did not operate at Spring Grove after the Maryland Hospital relocated to the Catonsville site in 1872. It has also been called the 'Hospital for Strangers and Mariners,' the 'Hospital for Seamen and Strangers,' and as the 'Retreat for Strangers and Mariners.' Although there were several major expansions of the building in later years, originally it had 18 patient care units or "wards" (later called "Halls") three floors, with three units en echelon on each floor of each wing. They should not be considered safe or appropriate for modern consumption. After World War II, Spring Grove, along with other state hospitals -- not only in Maryland, but across the country -- suffered from chronic overcrowding. Mackenzie and Smythe to construct a major addition to the hospital, in the form of an 'east wing' (see below). The Dr. Wade's successor, Dr. Robert Garrett, oversaw the purchase of an additional 108 acres. 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. [5], In 2014, Baltimore County plans on subdividing the hospital campus in order to create an 8.8 acre regional park for the Catonsville community. The above referenced report of 1836 indicates that, for its 54 patients, the hospital's staff consisted of two Physicians (Dr. Stokes, as the 'President Physician,' and another physician, the 'Executive Officer'), twelve nuns, three additional male staff members, and three additional female staff members. The newly conceived hospital represented the first organized public effort in Maryland to address the mental health (as well as the general medical) needs of the poor and indigent through the establishment of a hospital. Today, the hospital operates 425 beds [1] and has approximately 800 admissions and discharges a year. Entrance in 1863. Other sources suggest that the new building may not have been completed until two years later, in 1800. $3,000 of the total came from the City of Baltimore; $3,000 by the State; and the balance, approximately $12,000, came from donations given by several benevolent citizens. White Building (originally known as the 'Disturbed Women's Building') was built in 1952, the Hamilton Building (originally known as the 'Admissions Building') in 1953, and the vii). In 1835 Dr. William Stokes, a graduate of the University of Maryland College of Medicine, was appointed as the hospital's first full-time State-employed physician. Also by the middle 1890's a house telephone system was in place. [10] The Maryland Board of Public Works voted 21 to approve the sale of the campus, with Hogan and Treasurer Dereck E. Davis supporting the lease agreement and Comptroller Peter Franchot dissenting, on May 15, 2022.[11][12]. As with any setting that provides for the care of vulnerable individuals, the possibility of exploitation and abuse was always present at Spring Grove. Pharmacological treatments, as listed in the Spring Grove Formulary of August 8, 1899 included, for example, a recipe for 'Eau de Botot' -- said to have been the first commercial mouthwash and oral antiseptic. At least one of the early Spring Grove structures, the Other than Market St. (Broadway), none of these streets existed when the hospital was built. In 1814, during the War of 1812, some 234 sick and wounded soldiers were taken to the hospital from the battles that occurred around Baltimore, including the Battle of North Point. firehouse; and several other Although perhaps the concepts of Moral Management are seen today as being somewhat puritanical and outdated, modern scholarly studies have reasserted that the application certain of its basic elements can be very beneficial in promoting recovery from serious psychiatric illnesses -- and in preventing relapses. For example, it As noted above, 'General' patients were treated in the middle sections of the building, and the wards that housed the convalescent patients were closest to the hospital building's main entrance. Accordingly, despite oral history that supports its existence at Spring Grove, it is not clear if the 'Inebriate Asylum' ever actually operated at the site. Although chartered and owned by the State, and at least partially supported by State funds from the beginning, the facility was originally overseen primarily by the mayor and city council of Baltimore. However, it may be of some interest to note that Everett Dayhoff, the man after whom the Dayhoff Building (c. 1961) is named, served as the school's 'Instructor of Bandaging.' Main Building (1853) had been built in accordance with the previous era's 'Kirkbride' plan of institutional design -- a plan that led to the construction of hospitals that consisted essentially of a single, imposing, often immense, even monolithic building. At the turn of the 20th-century the hospital's farm yield thousands of bushels of produce each year. Please enable JavaScript in your browser. articles manufactured and 18,579 items repaired by patients. Colin Mackenzie and James Smythe, persuaded the Baltimore City Council to lease the hospital to them for a period of 15-years. The cost of 'removing the patients' to the new site in Catonsville was listed as having been $872.25 (Annual Report of 1872 and 1873. For more information about Springfield Hospital Center's History, see In addition, several buildings that were built at the site a matter of only several years after the Main Building opened are still extant. In addition, the property was also located in what had become a fairly densely populated and poorer section of Baltimore -- and among Mr. Hopkins' purposes in establishing a hospital was to provide for medical care to the indigent.. Construction of the new hospital at the Spring Grove site had resumed in 1868, but, apparently, on a limited scale -- due to a lack of money. By all accounts, the lottery was very successful, and at least one historian has noted that a number of the lottery winners donated their winnings back to the State so that they could be applied to the expansion of the hospital. However, the expansions and other changes did not allow the facility to keep up with demand, and overcrowded conditions continued. This newer system allowed for greater flexibility in terms of grouping patients by diagnosis and level of functioning, and it also tended to make expansion and future growth easier. Furthermore, its monolithic design was badly out of step with the needs and sensibilities of a modern psychiatric hospital; and, in the days before "condo's" and "loft apartments" it probably wouldn't have lent itself to adaptive reuse. By way of explanation, the report points out that the illnesses of the 'public' patients tended to be significantly more chronic than those of the 'private' patients. [The inspectors] found a large, nay almost the whole of the East building useless for the great purposes of a lunatic asylum, for want of properly warmed and secured cells for confinement.' An annual report published in December 1877 (five years after the new facility opened at Spring Grove) notes that as of that time, the Maryland Hospital for the Insane at Spring Grove was treating 18 African-American patients, and by1896 it was caring for 45 African-American patients (24 male and 21 female).. However, upon closer inspection both the basic structure and the interior were found to have been in 'ruinous' condition by the middle 1830's. However, presumably the Maryland Hospital had no official connection with the Confederacy during the war. Other important sources included the Maryland Historical Society and the Baltimore County Historical Society. The story may say more about contemporary perceptions of Mr. Hopkins than it does about an actual event. 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