Gardener's Cottage, and Main Gateway Lodge House, c. 1890

The "Main Gateway" Lodge House (R),  later known as the Wade Avenue Gatehouse, is the only one of the original three gatehouses, that is not still standing.  (The other two are at the Bloomsbury Ave. Entrance and at the former Paradise Avenue Entrance -- across from today's Red Brick Cottage #3.)  All three of the gatehouses were built in the early 1880s when Dr. Gundry was superintendent. Records indicate that the intended purpose of the gatehouses, which were originally called the "Lodges," was to provide a setting patient and staff recreation -- sort of a home away from home. It should be noted that for many years the main entrance to the hospital grounds was located near to where the MPRC Building stands today, at the north end of Hickory Street and the Employee Village.  Therefore, the "Wade Avenue Gatehouse" did not stand at the current Wade Avenue entrance, but, instead, was located at the original Wade Avenue Entrance, several hundred yards to the west.  Part of the entrance roadway and the stone posts for the gate itself are still in their original locations.  The Wade Ave Gatehouse ("Main Gateway Lodge House" shown above) was demolished in the late1980s after it was found to have deteriorated beyond repair.  The view in the above picture is to the south, towards the Hospital's grounds. The house that is visible behind the fence, at left, in the above photograph was the Gardener's Cottage.  It stood just north of where the MPRC Building stands today. Although the Gardener's Cottage is no longer extant, its brick and stone foundation can still be spotted, flush with the ground, on the lawn between the MPRC Building and the electric substantion (on Locust St). The platform in the foreground may have been associated with the Catonsville Short Line Railroad, a local line that ran past the Gatehouse in the late Nineteenth Century. The route of the railroad, in the vicinity of Spring Grove, can be viewed on a map of 1898. A spur from the Catonsville Short Line supplied coal to the hospital's Power Plant up until 1970.

The picture to the left is also of the Main Entrance and Lodge (gatehouse), taken from the hospital grounds looking out towards Catonsville.  Note the two stone gateposts, both of which are still standing in their original locations.