A fine, old Baltimore gazebo salvaged from a long-gone Catholic psychiatric hospital

On Saturday, I was shown the way to the Linden Avenue Gazebo, in a charming block of Bolton Hill that had been closed to traffic some 50 years ago. There are few gazebos in Baltimore, so I wondered if it was original to Bolton Hill — there are several parks in this historic community — or if some enterprising urban pioneers had brought it there. According to a story that appeared in The Bolton Hill Bulletin, the latter is the case. The young couples who bought houses on Linden in the early 1970s, after the first years of white flight from the city, acquired the Victorian gazebo from the old Seton Psychiatric Institute in northwest Baltimore. 

That rang a loud bell for me because I had researched and written about Seton, a large Catholic hospital that opened in 1844 and became over time the go-to place for troubled priests — that is, alcoholic priests and those who had been accused of sexually abusing minors. 

This bit of dark history is not well known because the hospital, on the grounds of what became Seton Business Park, closed in 1973 and its secrets were not revealed until much later.

The hospital provided decades of clinical care for clerics. But it also figured in the official cover-up of crimes: Predatory priests from all over the country went to Seton for treatment sabbaticals but also to avoid facing prosecution or being defrocked. It is briefly mentioned in the Oscar-winning film, Spotlight. As we have learned over the last 25 years, from reporting by journalists and from official reports by attorneys general, many clergy returned to the scenes of their crimes or were shipped to other unsuspecting parishes, and the abusive behavior of many continued. This routine — “send them to Baltimore” — was common knowledge within the hierarchy from Baltimore to Boston.

Epilogue: The urban pioneers from Linden Avenue heard about the salvaging of items from Seton before its scheduled demolition. They were allowed to haul away one of three gazebos from the hospital grounds. It was reassembled where it sits now, on a brick pavilion in the middle of the 1700 block, to the good fortune of the current residents.