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The Walter P. Carter Center was constructed on its current site and officially opened in 1976. The seven story building was named for the prominent civil rights leader, Walter P. Carter. The building was originally planned to provide inpatient and community-based services to the residents of South and Southwest Baltimore City. Today's mission includes expanding the service City-Wide.

The Center currently operates fifty-one (51) beds in 3 units. All units are co-ed (male and female). There are seventeen (17) beds on each unit as well as day rooms where patients can watch television, participate in leisure time activities and interact with other patients on the unit.   The Center is located in Baltimore City, west of the Harbor and north of the Camden Yards baseball stadium, next to the Veterans Administration Hospital and the University of Maryland Hospital.

The Carter Center, an acute inpatient psychiatric hospital, is operated for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene by the Mental Hygiene Administration. The Mental Hygiene Administration supervised the management and day to day operations of the Center's Administrative and Clinical activities.

WPCC provides acute psychiatric treatment to adults living in the Baltimore City. The primary objective is the prevention of unduly long-term psychiatric hospitalization. Services are provided to patients without regard to race, religion or ethnic origin. As a publicly funded facility, the center is charged with providing acute, adult psychiatric care to the indigent, those without health insurance, the insured for whom no private sector bed can be provided, or those with legal complications, e.g., detainers, inmate in need of civil commitment, or court orders. Patients are admitted, discharged and/or transferred for somatic care where indicated, without regard to their financial circumstances. If patients are unable to pay for the care provided, the facility, via the Mental Hygiene Administration absorbs the cost.