ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The historic Chestnut Lodge, one of the most prominent buildings in Rockville since its construction in 1888, was destroyed by fire early Sunday morning.
The landmark building opened as the Woodlawn Hotel in 1889, promising clean, country air to visitors who would travel to the facility by trolley from nearby Washington, DC.
As many of those visitors became enamored of Rockville, they purchased their own homes in the area, depriving the hotel of its customer base and forcing the enterprise to close in 1905.
The family history of Rockville resident Kitty Reed provides one example. "My great, great grandparents would come out from Washington, where they had a townhouse down near the Philips Gallery, and stay for the summer. She was from New Orleans and had lost a sister to Yellow Fever in New Orleans and knew not to stay in a big city in the summer. So, they would come out here to get cleaner air and they liked Rockville, so they scouted around and bought a piece of property," she said.
When the hotel closed, the four-story, brick building was then purchased by Milwaukee psychiatrist Ernest Bullard, who turned it into a sanitarium that cared for those with mental illness. Bullard recruited therapist Freida Fromm-Reichman, who was known for her humane treatment of the mentally ill, and who helped the newly-named Chestnut Lodge gain a worldwide reputation for innovative treatment.
"I think it put Rockville on the map in many ways because Chestnut Lodge became internationally renowned for the type of psychiatry it was practicing," said local historian Eileen McGuckian, the author of Rockville, Portrait of a City.
Rockville resident Kate Ostell is one of the psychiatrists who practiced at Chestnut Lodge.
"The average length of stay for in-patients when I first got there was several years, and it allowed time to really get to know people and really work with them in depth over a course of time as they got better. People would move out from the in-patient unit to half-way houses and eventually into the community, and stay with the same treatment team," she told 9News Now.
"Right now, a lot of places have a psychiatrist come in and give medications and see someone once a month. Here you could really see people in all stages of their day, their week, their month, over years and it was a very nice relationship," she said.
"It was my dream job," said Susan Rushbrook, who grew up near the campus and who eventually worked with troubled children there.
"It's sad. I have goosebumps. It's sad that it's history," she said as she took pictures of the destroyed building on Sunday afternoon.
McGuckian, the local author who served for years as the Executive Director of Peerless Rockville, a group that preserves local history, is saddened by the destruction of the landmark. "The people in Rockville care very much about their history and the physical evidence of that history, and it is very sad to lose this important landmark," she said.
Fire investigators had not, on Sunday evening, made an official determination of the fire's cause. In recent years, the abandoned building, which was scheduled to be converted into condominiums, had been frequently damaged by vandals who broke into the structure.
Republished with permission of WUSA-TV.
