Existing comment:
Campus to Army Camps and Back Again
President Monroe singed a charter in 1821 that established Columbian College on a site north of Florida Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets, Columbian College moved to Foggy Bottom in 1912 and became George Washington University, but the original campus area continued to be called "College Hill."
During the Civil War, the Union Army commandeered the farmland on which Meridian Hill Park would eventually be built. The Army built camps there with names like Cameron, Relief, Carver, and Barclay. As the war continued, numerous hospitals, including Columbian and Mount Pleasant, were established in the same area.
After the Civil War, Meridian Hill became a middle-class African American neighborhood. Wayland Seminary, which had opened in Foggy Bottom to train young African American men and women as preachers and teachers for the South, moved to a building at Chapin and 15th Streets in 1875. The school operated there until merging with Richmond Theological Seminary in 1899 to form Virginia Union University in Richmond. Booker T. Washington, noted African American political leader,educator, orator, and author, was one of Wayland's distinguished alumni.
For more information go to: www.nps.gov/mehi
Captain Grover of New York's 76th Regiment wrote home in 1861, "We encamped in the edge of what must be in summer a beautiful grove, on the estate of Commodore Porter, a few rods only from his mansion now occupied as a hospital. But beautiful as was the situation... snow and mud, cold fingers and toes, empty stomachs and soiled cloths concealed every beauty, and compelled us to attend only the work of arranging the camp." |