The oldest burial ground at Saint Elizabeths was created in 1856 on the wooded western slope of the West Campus. In most cases, funeral arrangements for patients who dies at Saint Elizabeths were made by family members of the deceased, and the remains were not interred on the hospital grounds. In some cases, however, when no next of kin could be found or other arrangements made, deceased patients were interred in cemeteries on both the West and East Campuses.
Poor recordkeeping of the period make it difficult to determine the exact number of graves in the West Campus cemetery. In addition to the approximately 450 graves of the Civil War veterans there is an unknown number of civilian burials. Most of the veterans buried in the West Campus cemetery were patients of the hospital and not causalities of the war, who passed away at the army or navy hospitals that were set up on the campus during the Civil War. Both African American and white veterans are buried here. It is also possible that Confederate soldiers were buried in this cemetery, but a lack of concrete evidence or records leaves this up in the air.
Early interments were marked by wooden slabs, with civilian graves only identified with numbers. Stone markers were provided for military graves by the US government after 1873. In that year, the three-quarter-acre West Campus burying ground was deemed full, and a new cemetery was opened on the East Campus. Approximately 2,050 military and 3,000 civilian interments took place in the nine-acre cemetery on the East Campus over the next 120 years.
]]>St. Elizabeths Hospital strived for self-sufficiency. Leaders of the hospital wanted it to be able to provide for itself and made it their mission to develop a range of services on-campus to address those needs. The Fire House was constructed in 1883 to support that initiative. The small, brick structure was designed in the Italianate style and housed the hospital’s firefighting engines. There was also a living space for the chief engineer. The defining characteristic of the Fire House is its clock tower. It told campus residents the time, but was also used to signal emergencies.
During the earlier decades of its operation, St. Elizabeths was plagued by a series of fatal fires. Its design made fires in the Center Building especially dangerous. Buildings designed in the cottage plan were more easily contained; however, as the campus grew, the hospital's officials realized that they needed a better firefighting system. Having a fire house on the campus was also important because St. Elizabeths was in a remote location and the closest fire department was more than two miles away.
By the 1930s, a lot of the maintenance taking place on the West Campus focused in upgrading and maintaining the older buildings. New development and construction continued to take place on the East Campus. The older buildings were more susceptible to fires and the those earlier decades of the 20th century, the hospital faces destructive fires. By the 1960s, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare stepped in to provide the hospital with more funding to improve fire suppression plans on the campus, This included an upgrade in the hospital's plumbing facilities, heating unites, and electrical systems. Some of the funding was also used to upgrade the Fire House's equipment.
]]>In 1869, Saint Elizabeths purchased the land that would become the hospital's East Campus. The purpose of the additional land was to have more space for Saint Elizabeths' agricultural operations. Farming became an important source of food for the hospital's residents and was beneficial to the treatment of patients working on the land.
However, as the hospital entered the twentieth century, it faced a problem of overcrowding. The East Campus, primarily made up of farmland, needed to be used for additional housing. Over the years, the agricultural operations taking place on the East Campus began to gradually dissipate and more patient buildings were constructed on the land.
Many of the larger buildings found on the East Campus today reflect changing ideals in medical treatment during the twentieth century. It was during the 1900s that the medical community at Saint Elizabeths began to steer away from the idea that to treat a person with mental illness, their moral character needed to be improved. As the twentieth century progressed, Saint Elizabeths' staff emphasized the importance of medical treatment and clinical medicine.
In 1987, responsibility over the East Campus was given to DC. Today, Saint Elizabeths Hospital still provides treatment for mental illness on the East Campus, while portions of the East Campus have been redeveloped for new uses.
The following historic sites are found on the East Campus:
Dry Barn (destroyed by fire in 2022)
]]>Saint Elizabeths' West Campus includes some of the hospital's earliest buildings, with The Center Building being the first. Facilities on the West Campus of Saint Elizabeths provide a striking picture of how the opinions of mental illness and its treatment evolved over time in the United States. Saint Elizabeths was an institution that understood the important role the built environment played in the care of their patients. This philosophy significantly influenced the approach hospital leaders took to the design and construction of buildings. The consciousness exhibited by the hospital's designers was something that set Saint Elizabeths apart from other institutions during its time.
Today, the federal government remains responsible for the West Campus. The campus includes the headquarters of the United States Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security.
The following historic sites are found on the West Campus:
]]>The Rest was constructed in 1882 and served as Saint Elizabeths mortuary and pathology lab. One of the most prominent figures to work in The Rest was Dr. Isaac Wright Blackburn. Blackburn was appointed special pathologist at the hospital in 1884, and was a leading pioneer in the study of mental illness.
During his time at Saint Elizabeths, Blackburn published one of his most famous works, Gross Morbid Anatomy of the Brain, as well as detailed drawings and photographs of the brain. By 1900, he had established a collection of more than 1,000 brain specimens that helped establish a universal set of reference data for teaching and scientific purposes. Some of these tissue samples are on display in the new Saint Elizabeths Hospital complex today.
In addition to Blackburn’s work, during the 1930s, Saint Elizabeths became an important resource for films that documented live patients and their brains after they passed away. All of these resources were shared across the country for other professionals in the field. This work made Saint Elizabeths a leading figure in the medical field. In 1924, a new lab was constructed on the hospital's East Campus and named the Blackburn Laboratory in his honor.
The building includes two stories and a basement. During its time as a lab and mortuary, it included special arrangements and features to help care for, and preserve, the remains of patients who passed away until their families could make arrangements. The floor plan is open and includes many windows that allow natural light, which benefited the Circulating Library that would later move in. Offices for staff were found on the second floor.
By 1929, the mortuary and pathology lab had been moved out of The Rest, and the Circulating Library had been moved in to take its place.
]]>The Administration Building, constructed in 1903, was the centerpiece of the hospital’s largest building campaign and expansion, which included fourteen new buildings. Plans for the Administration Building had been in the works for quite some time, but issues with funding had been plaguing Saint Elizabeths under White's supervision, resulting in numerous obstacles getting in the way of the building's construction. When it was finally finished, it proved to be a significant addition to the campus.
The Administration Building housed a record room that provided the hospital staff with space for a much needed and consolidated filing system. This helped in keeping important files about patients in one space, where staff could easily find what they were looking for. This filing system also helped in White's goal of having the staff record patient treatment and progress on standardized forms. These forms would help in solidifying a common language and evaluation process between all staff members at Saint Elizabeths.
White also started a program to photograph patients and document their history, which he believed would be valuable to the patient, their families, and the staff. All of these records, and the history they documented, were kept in the new Administration Building. This helped in establish an important archive about the history of Saint Elizabeths and its patients.
The Administration Building is red brick with white stone quoin trimmings. It is made up of a three-story center pavilion and two, two-story wings. The facade of the building's central pavilion has a portico and six colossal columns. The building is not currently being used and sits empty on Saint Elizabeths' West Campus.
]]>Built in 1924, the Blackburn Laboratory was named for Dr. Isaac Wright Blackburn, who had been appointed special pathologist at Saint Elizabeths in 1884. The Laboratory was the hospital's first medical science facility dedicated to the study of mental illness, and is an important physical example of how treatment philosophies at Saint Elizabeths changed during the twentieth century. Before then, therapeutic practices were the primary treatment for patients; however, the 1900s saw the medical staff of Saint Elizabeths employing more scientific forms of treatment.
The Laboratory was part of a major expansion on the East Campus, overseen primarily by Superintendent William Alanson White. This project started in 1900 in response to major overcrowding at the hospital. The goal was to construct multiple modern facilities to create more space for patients, recreation, and medical treatment. After assessing design proposals from various architecture firms across the country, the hospital administrators hired Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge from Boston.
Similar to the other buildings designed by Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, the Blackburn Laboratory is a two-story brick building in the Renaissance Revival style. Throughout the years under White's supervision and after, the East Campus continued to be developed and built on. The agricultural landscape that was once the symbol of the East Campus diminished as buildings continued to be built on the land. It also indicated an important shift in where scientific and medical studies took place at Saint Elizabeths. Prior to these development campaigns on the East Campus, the West Campus was the epicenter for this type of research; however, this work moved east with these new buildings.
]]>Constructed in 1886, the Dining Hall benefited the social lives of patients at Saint Elizabeths. It allowed for as many as 600 patients to convene for meals. This was far different than dining in the Center Building, where patients took meals to their rooms or ate in smaller dining spaces. Patients were able to sit together to share meals, which encouraged them to interact with one another and helped establish a sense of normalcy. Being able to socialize in a setting such as a main dining hall was not always possible for patients in the Center building. There were some dining rooms in the main building, but patients mostly ate their meals by themselves in their rooms.
Once a year, around Easter, the hospital would organize a ball for their patients and local companies would donate money and supplies for the event. Events like this annual ball set Saint Elizabeths apart from other institutions and provided patients more opportunities for socialization that they would not have gotten at most other facilities. The construction of the Dining Hall also helped the hospital convert the dining rooms in the Center Building into additional rooms for potential patients, resulting in the hospital accepting more patients.
The Dining Hall is a brick building with many side and clerestory windows, which provide a lot of natural light and improved ventilation for those using it. It is a one-story structure that includes a basement, and an important feature in its design was to have it be able to be used by hundreds of patients at once. As mentioned previously, it was also designed to be able to host larger events that many patients could attend, such as the annual ball or larger holiday meals.
The Dining Hall will continue to be a place for DHS employees to dine and meet with one another during the work day.
]]>Hitchcock Hall was constructed in 1910 and used as a space for patient assembly and amusement. The hall included 1,200 seats for the hospital’s residents and hosted many forms of entertainment such as vaudeville performances, moving pictures, operas, musicals, dances, and lectures. Saint Elizabeths offered patients multiple recreational activities to help benefit their treatment, and the activities housed in Hitchcock Hall were a testament to that.
Hitchcock Hall also hosted a small chapel in its basement for patients, which the chaplaincy staff found inadequate, and often wrote to the administrative staff about. In addition to that, in 1941 the basement was also a space used for psychodrama. Psychodrama was a form of therapy which encouraged patients to role-play ways to deal with their feelings and how to cope in life beyond Saint Elizabeth's campus. During this time, Saint Elizabeths was only the second hospital in the country to practice this type of therapy (with the Beacon Hill Hospital in New York being the first). In 1955, to celebrate Saint Elizabeths centennial, patients and staff organized and performed a play titled "Cry for Humanity." This play was about Dorothea Dix and her important role in establishing Saint Elizabeths. It was also a significant performance because the public was invited to see it, and it included what daily life was like for patients at the hospital.
The flair of the Hitchcock Hall's exterior reflects the buildings purpose of being a place for patient entertainment, amusement, and creativity. The Hall is a brick structure with ornamental details on its facade, and a red brick roof. Its dramatic front entrance and terracotta decorations make it one of the more grand structures on the campus.
As the Department of Homeland Security moves onto Saint Elizabeths' campus, Hitchcock Hall will continue to serve its original purpose. The building will house a theater, and be a place of assembly for DHS employees.
]]>Although there were several single-family homes built at Saint Elizabeths for staff who lived on the site, only one was built for patient care. In 1886, Sarah Borrows, a patient from a wealthy Washingtonian family, was admitted to Saint Elizabeths. Her mother, C.Z. Borrows, concerned with Sarah’s care, had a cottage built on campus for her daughter and other female patients from affluent families.
In 1893, Ms. Borrows admitted herself into the hospital and lived in the same cottage until her death in 1917. The cottage was named for the family but was often misspelled in later years, and is now known as Burroughs Cottage. As Dr. William W. Godding took over the responsibilities of Saint Elizabeths, he valued the idea of having more cottage-like structures on the campus, instead of larger facilities like the Center Building. Before fully embracing the "cottage plan" he would later value, Godding had plans to construct a larger hospital for female patients. Saint Elizabeths was experiencing overcrowding under his supervision and Godding believed that the campus needed another large facility; however, the success of the smaller, more cottage-like facilities had a significantly more positive effect on the patients living in them. With this effect in front of him, Godding could not ignore the benefits of having patients live in cottages, so he decided to support this new plan instead. To Godding, this created a more homey setting throughout the campus, and allowed patients to live in smaller groups that would help their social lives and interactions with one another.
The Burroughs Cottage included two stories and a basement. The exterior of the cottage was brick with brownstone trim that was later painted white. The floor plan and interior of the cottage was relatively simple.
In 2026, the Department of Homeland Security demolished the historic building, despite its location within a National Historic Landmark.
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