On January 15, 2008, the state of Maryland announced that Rosewood would be closed in the near future, and the center began the process of transferring residents to other facilities.

Boys were taught farming, gardening and carpentry while girls learned sewing, washing, milking and horticulture, as well as training for domestic service.

Another hope was realized when in 1894 and 1907 the Maryland Legislature passed bills to transfer all insane and feeble-minded patients from county almshouses to state institutions.

From 1911 to 1933, 166 patients, mostly women and girls, left Rosewood under habeas corpus writs; they were subject to human trafficking, bought by the rich as indentured servants and unpaid laborers, often callously treated and often abandoned by their "carers."

The school greatly expanded its capacity during the twentieth century and by 1968 had approximately 2,700 patients, a number nearly triple that of only seventeen years earlier.

Despite the rapid expansion of facilities during this period, Rosewood continually suffered from over-crowding and a shortage of staff, often resulting in unsatisfactory patient conditions.

These conditions were periodically reported during the 1940s in newspaper stories, culminating in 1949 in the series of articles in The Baltimore Sun on Rosewood and other state hospitals titled, "Maryland's Shame".

Public reaction to this expose and a series of grand jury reports in the 1950s focused attention on the need to better rehabilitate and eventually de-institutionalize patients while improving conditions for those requiring life-time care.

After reaching a high in the late 1960s, the patient population sharply declined as the emphasis shifted to the integration of the people with developmental disabilities into the community.

[citation needed] At the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis there is a large collection of historic photos[10] that illustrates the care of the Rosewood residents, and records related to patients and the administration of the hospital.

[12][13] Following resolution of environmental and surveyor issues, Stevenson announced in June 2017[citation needed] that they were granted permission to acquire the Rosewood Center.