Existing comment:
A Farm for St. Elizabeths, 1891-1959:
St. Elizabeth's Hospital should be "the grandest institution of its kind in the world."
-- Charles H,. Nichols, first medical superintendent of St. Elizabeths.
For nearly 70 years, the land around you was a hospital farm. St. Elizabeths Hospital bought the property in 1891 to produce food for its ever-growing number of patients. The hospital was founded in 1855 to care for mentally ill people from Washington, DC, and the US military.
St. Elizabeths was a bold project for its time. It was originally designed to hold 250 patients in the world's most modern hospital for the mentally ill. But before the first building was even completed, the outbreak of the Civil War forced the government to use much of the new hospital for wounded soldiers. By the end of the war, 600 patients were crammed into the hospital. The number reached 718 by 1875. In the 1940s, the hospital complex covered more than 300 acres and housed some 7,000 patients.
Much of the farm machinery around Oxon Hill Farm dates from the St. Elizabeths era. |