Stone walls two stories high mark the Hessian Barracks, begun in the summer of 1777 and not completed until 1781. The State of Maryland contracted to build a barracks in the summer of 1777, though it was not completed until 1781. Originally two L-shaped buildings stood here; the western barracks was demolished in 1871 to make way for a new Victorian-style large central school building. Look up at the gallery porches and the gable roof that mark the surviving structure, the very walls that once held British and German prisoners of war during the American Revolutionary War.
Across the decades this place kept changing purpose: its parade field served as the Agricultural Fairgrounds from 1853 to 1860, it was used as a state armory, a site for silkworm production, and after the nearby Battle of South Mountain and the subsequent Battle of Antietam in September 1862 it served as a military hospital. In 1867 the grounds were chosen for the Maryland Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, the present-day Maryland School for the Deaf. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, the barracks invites you to study its stonework and imagine the many lives that passed through this building, the porches, and the open parade ground.