Just as a scourge drove the birth of the Henryton Tuberculosis Sanatorium (Henryton) in Marriottsville, Henryton evolved into a local scourge during its decades of abandonment. During the early 1900s, Maryland’s African- American community suffered a tuberculosis outbreak four times higher than Maryland’s Caucasian population. With segregated hospitals as the order of the day, along with sub-par African-American health care, a policy to curb this escalating contagious disease demanded responsiveness. In 1922, the first “separate but equal” Maryland African-American sanatorium opened its doors for the under-represented and very ill African-American sector. For almost forty years, this institution, nestled within a wooded setting, effectively treated African-American tuberculosis patients.

In the 1960s, however, tuberculosis was on the decline, and the sanatorium transformed into Henryton State Hospital, which was charged with the treatment of adults with profound mental disabilities. With the concept of deinstitutionalization of large medical complexes taking nationwide root in the 1970s, fewer mentally disabled patients were hospitalized at the large Henryton complex. Henryton closed in 1985 and remained abandoned until its demolition in 2013.

A magnet for vandals and arsonists, Henryton’s nineteen abandoned buildings in a remote section of property surrounded by state park grounds advanced into a local menace for nearly thirty years. After Henryton’s closure, more than seventy fires erupted in Henryton campus structures. Lack of utilities on the site, as well as Henryton’s remote location, impeded the fire department’s response to the numerous fires. Despite preservationists’ efforts to save the historic site, the state of Maryland did not consider Henryton anything other than a nuisance. Safety issues and difficulties with the management of this property pressed Maryland officials to level all standing structures. Henryton’s former footprint, once a necessary defense against a deadly disease ravaging Maryland’s African-American population, is now a rolling meadow within the Patapsco Valley State Park.