St. Elizabeths Hospital

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The Center Building at St. Elizabeths, one of the oldest on the campus.

St. Elizabeths Hospital was the first large-scale, federally run psychiatric hospital in the U.S. It was founded by Congress in 1852, largely as the result of the efforts of Dorothea Dix, a pioneering advocate for the mentally ill. It opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane; in 1916, its name was officially changed to St. Elizabeths (the colonial-era name for the tract of land on which the hospital was built). The hospital had been casually known by this name since the time of the Civil War, when—in their letters home to loved ones—patients of army hospitals temporarily located on the grounds were reluctant to refer to the institution by its full title.

The campus of St. Elizabeths sits on bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, in the southeast quadrant of Washington, DC. It has many important buildings, foremost among them the Center Building, designed according to the principles of the Kirkbride Plan by Thomas U. Walter (1804-1887), who is perhaps better known as the primary architect of the expansion of the U.S. Capitol that was begun in 1851. Much of St. Elizabeths' campus has now fallen into disuse, and is consequently in serious disrepair; St. Elizabeths was named one of the nation's 11 Most Endangered Places in 2002 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. [1]

The Main Building at St. Elizabeths.

St. Elizabeths has treated over 125,000 patients, many of whom are buried on its grounds, which also include a Civil-War-era cemetery. Several important therapeutic techniques were pioneered at St. Elizabeths, and it served as a model for later institutions. Well-known patients of St. Elizabeths include would-be presidential assassins Richard Lawrence and John Hinckley, Jr., successful assassin Charles J. Guiteau, until his execution, as well as Mary Fuller, Ezra Pound, and William Chester Minor.

In 1987, the District of Columbia took over the operation of the hospital after the Department of Health and Human Services abandoned it. Although it continues to operate, it does so on a far smaller scale than it once did. Part of the campus was featured as the outside of the Judge Advocate General's building in the movie A Few Good Men. As of 2005, the federal government and DC both are considering ways to redevelop the 356-acre (1.4 km²) site, with most plans including both residential and retail development. The land around the hospital is owned by both D.C. and the federal government, complicating redevelopment efforts.

The Department of Homeland Security announced on March 20, 2007 that it will spend $3 billion to move its headquarters and most of its Washington-based offices to a new building on the site, beginning with the United States Coast Guard in 2011.