Just outside Arbutus, about seven miles from Baltimore, a manual labor school for indigent boys stood on a two hundred acre farm of meadow land, orchards, fertile fields, and broad pastures, with attractive buildings on a hill overlooking the surrounding country. A 1903 news article called it a farm whose principal product for sixty years had been men, praising it for producing honest men and useful citizens while also disposing of more than $3500 worth of produce annually. Johns Hopkins, founder of the university and hospital that bore his name in Baltimore, served on the Farm School's Board of Directors for nearly twenty-five years until his death in 1873. Gustav W. Lurman, Jr., a Catonsville resident and owner of the nearby estates Farmlands and Bloomsbury, joined the board in 1881 and later served as board president for more than twenty years. A brick student residence was constructed in 1860 at a cost of $16,000.