The Government Hospital for the Insane is now called St. Elizabeths Hospital as of 1916 when the name was formally adopted. But when we are referring to the days of the mental hospital on this website, we use it’s original name.

The name St. Elizabeths was used by the military hospital established there during the Civil War to differentiate it from the original hospital, and so we use the name St. Elizabeths when referring to the military years.

The usage of apostrophes back when the tract of land was named was inconsistent and infrequent. Congress made the name change official in 1916, maintaining the seventeenth-century name with its lack of apostrophe. What was the Government Hospital for the Insane in now formally St. Elizabeths Hospital.

Admissions were limited to the indigent residing in the District of Columbia at the time they became ill and to the insane of the Army and Navy. If the hospital had vacancies, it also accepted additional patients for a fee, regardless of their state of residence. Although there would be slight modifications to this policy and some exceptions over the years, the intent of the admissions policy would remain substantively the same until after World War II.

Thomas Sessford was an indigent civilian resident of D.C. of English birth with no age or birth date listed in the patient register. He suffered from dementia, but there is no further information about his medical condition or the circumstances of his death less than seven months after his admission.

Information gathered from the Register of Cases, ,1855-1941, National Archives in Washington, DC, Record Group 418, Entry 64.

On February 21, 1855, Mary E. Walker became the first female patient at the hospital. Walker was 23 and suffering from dementia assumed to be caused by epilepsy. She died at the hospital on January 6, 1893.

Information gathered from the National Archives, Washington, DC.

The west campus in 1860 showing areas of park and farmland.

From its inception, St. Elizabeths endeavored to produce as much of its own food as possible. Just as the first superintendent, Dr. Nichols, wanted the hospital to be a model for mental institutions, he also wanted his hospital farm to be a model farm. About half of the original 200 acres of the hospital grounds were under cultivation, and more land was acquired over the years to expand the farming operations.

In addition to the garden produce and livestock, the hospital also produced considerable hay, oats, rye and mangel-wurzel (fodder beet) for livestock feed, as well as having hundreds of Iona, Catawba, and Diana grapevines; and an apple and peach orchard at the bottom of the slope near the river.

Corridor on Poplar ward for white males in the Center Building shown here in 1905. (National Archives RG 418-G-102)

The the bricks for the Center Building (the main hospital) were manufactured with clay sourced from the hospital grounds by “certain strong patients of the laboring class” who were employed “digging and shoveling clay, and in the many handlings to which both raw and burnt bricks are subject”. By 1860, it was estimated that over 9 million bricks had been manufactured on site.

In addition, trees of various species growing on the site were used to finish and furnish patient wards in the main hospital. Each ward was then named after the wood that was used for its trim work. Thus, the Poplar Ward had trim made of poplar wood, and the Birch Ward had trim of birch wood.

Some of the stone used for the perimeter wall was quarried on the neighboring Barry Farm property, and the wood for some of the fencing came from the Giesboro Cavalry Depot when it closed after the Civil War.

A congressional act in 1946 transferred the care of members of the military to Veterans Administration facilities.

The West Campus, will be used to consolidate the headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This project is the largest federal construction project in the Washington, DC area since the Pentagon was built during World War II. The East Campus, which has been part of the District of Columbia since 1987, will house the headquarters for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with the remainder of the land developed as a mixed-use, mixed-income, walkable community.