page_title: Historical Society of Baltimore County
section_title: The Pest House
hierarchical_section_title: Historical Society of Baltimore County / The Almshouse Farm Site / The Pest House
caption_attribution_description: English: The barn, located in County Home Park in Cockeysville, MD, is owned by Baltimore County but used and operated by the Historical Society of Baltimore County, featuring their Dickenson-Gorsuch Farm Museum. (Photo. c2009).
context_page_description: The Historical Society of Baltimore County was founded in 1959 with the goal of preserving, interpreting, and illustrating the history of Baltimore County for the benefit of present and future generations of Marylanders, and is a resource for those interested in researching both local and family history. As the HSBC describes it, they "continually accomplish" their mission "through the production of presentations, lectures, workshops, entertaining educational publications, historical tours, and exhibits." Centrally located in Cockeysville, Maryland, the Society operates out of the Agriculture Building, the former Baltimore County Almshouse, which was built in 1872 and used to house the poor and mentally ill of Baltimore County until 1958.
  A nonprofit organization, the Society maintains a library and research facility. Since 1966, the Society has published History Trails, a county history journal which the Society defines as "semi-academic" and a "popular history publication."
context_section_description: The Pest House (referring to pestilence) was used to isolate residents who were ill. The two story building with a slate roof was built shortly after the Almshouse. The exterior is in reasonable condition, but the interior suffers from decades of non-use and vandalism. In 2012, Preservation Maryland placed the Pest House on its list of threatened historic properties. The same year, the Baltimore Sun reported that the 1872 Cockeysville building, "built to house poor people who had communicable diseases" was a "boarded-up structure" but
  Preservation Maryland was the subject an effort to "preserve it as a center for county African-American history."
caption: The barn housing the Dickenson-Gorsuch Farm Museum
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