After Rich and I visited Henryton, we were hooked. The surreal sense of standing in a once busy place now ravaged by time and neglect is very cool, and we wanted to experience it again. We kept joking about the
Always Sunny episode where Charlie and Frank become obsessed with finding things in the trash ("I can't stop thinkin' about the
trash!"). Now
we couldn't stop thinkin' about the trash! It took less than 2 weeks for Rich to come down to my apartment in Baltimore so we could go out on our next urbexing trip.
We had been researching places we wanted to explore for a while. Rich wanted to visit Glenn Dale Hospital, another former tuberculosis sanatorium. The
Wikipedia page, with its mention of police patrols, flooded basements, rats and bats, seemed as if it was intentionally designed to deter possible urbexers. Accessing and exploring Henryton had been really easy, and we didn't mind a little bit more of a challenge.We found a bunch of pictures online that piqued our interest in the place, but I felt like I was forgetting something.
I could remember a landscaping job I had one summer. I was being driven around in my boss's rickety old pickup truck. We pulled into a parking lot to grab some tools he had left there when he pointed to a nearby cluster of buildings and told me it was a recently shut down mental hospital. Although I was evidently intrigued enough to remember the experience, I hadn't thought about it in years, and couldn't remember the name of the place. A quick Google search yielded my answer: Crownsville State Hospital.
The Hospital for the Negro Insane, as it was known when it opened in 1911, was built to ease the overcrowding problems in segregation-era state asylums. Reading about the
history of the hospital feels like reading an account of slavery in the American South. A true repository of society's unwanted, "industrial therapy," or unpaid labor, was common for children and adults alike. Overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded, Crownsville must have been hell for many of the mentally ill people left there to stagnate. It is to the staff's credit I suppose, that lobotomies ceased to be performed there in 1954, earlier than many other hospitals.
As macabre and mysterious, and therefore attractive, as that all sounded, accessing Crownsville sounded risky. It lies directly next to a still used facility, and police regularly patrol the grounds. Maintenance workers use a large shed down the road, and a local paper recently reported a bunch of kids being arrested and charged with burglary for being being in one of the buildings. There wasn't much information on the usual urbexing sites. It was mentioned in this cool little
documentary, but no interior shots were taken.
Rich and I were sufficiently interested to investigate it. We decided we'd stop by Crownsville on the way to Glenn Dale. If it was worth it, we'd come back at night. We gathered out gear, broke out the GPS, and got on the highway. We decided not to enter any building at Crownsville. We hoped our camera would somewhat legitimize our presence there if confronted by police, and to just openly take pictures. We parked down the road, left our gloves, respirators, crowbars and other things behind. With only our camera, we walked along the narrow country road to Crownsville State Hospital.
The medical center next to the abandoned complex is quite active. We
walked as inconspicuously as we could past the active buildings. The
first abandoned one we saw was a children's building; its parking lot
was still used, and we would surely have been seen if we attempted to
enter. This shot is a view of its rear as we approached the main buildings.
As we strolled up to the abandoned mental hospital, we were once again blown away by the sheer size of it. There are three main buildings. It has only been abandoned for 10 years and is in remarkably good condition.
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Most of the windows had security mesh. This was one of the few that didn't. |
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Interesting juxtaposition |
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This is one of the older buildings. |
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The women's building is in excellent condition. |
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This one is starting to look run down. |
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We found one of the thousands of cups that were issued to patients. It's been sitting here for a long time. |
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Once upon a time, this place was probably meant to be peaceful. I still found it to be. |
We continued to explore the sprawling complex. At one point one of the workers at the nearby garage stopped his car and stared at us. We took pictures very conspicuously, hoping that he would lose interest in the amateur photographers. It worked. Past the main buildings were a series of broken down old white buildings.
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There are a lot satellite buildings at Crownsville. Some were recognizable as left over
from the old tobacco farm. Some were just burned out husks. |
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A small stable |
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This silo felt somehow threatening looming over us |
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The main buildings, seen from the side of the Marbury building. |
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Totally locked up, just like everything else. |
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The inside of the silo with the birds on it. |
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We didn't even want to try going in. |
We went around the back of this building and went inside.
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This crate was lying broken in front of the building. |
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The ceiling had rotted away and we could see these antiquated saws above. |
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There wasn't much in that building to see. We went to a building with a collapsed front. Only a small part was caved in. There was a small hole in the door. We looked around, confirmed no one was watching us, and went in. It appeared to be a workshop; pictures lay unframed and doors were stacked against walls.
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This is the view upon entering the workshop. |
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Someone, perhaps a patient, worked hard on this painting. |
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Another painting, this one in better condition. |
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The roof was collapsed over this part. |
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They must have built or repaired street lamps here. |
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We left the print shop and kept walking. We saw this old farmhouse, but didn't try to enter.We passed an old gas pump and walked down a path in the woods. We found some interesting stuff in the utility buildings.
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An old pumphouse |
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We were surprised to find this gas mask and air tank. The rest of the room was filled with forgotten but dangerous chemicals. |
We had been exploring the grounds for a few hours. It was about 3 by the time we got back to my car. We knew we were going to be doing this long into the night so grabbed a cup of coffee. Then we made our way to Glenn Dale Hospital.
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ReplyDeleteAwesome!!!!!! Great read
ReplyDeletegreat read and photos
ReplyDeleteGreat Photos!
ReplyDeleteHow Many paintings Were there?
ReplyDelete