Elizabeths is now the subject of an exhibition at the National Building Museum Architecture of an Asylum explores the links between architecture and mental health.ĭorothea Dix, the 19th-century reformer who fought for the facility, would have rolled over in her grave to see what St. Its vast, rolling patch of farmland had fallen into disrepair, too, in the poorest neighborhood in the U.S. Opened with idealism and hope in 1855, the facility had ballooned from 250 patients to as many as 8,000. Elizabeths Hospital was notorious - a rundown federal facility for the treatment of people with mental illness that was overcrowded and understaffed. When I moved to Washington, D.C., in 1962, St. National Archives and Records Administration/National Building Museum Elizabeths" during the Civil War, and took that name officially in 1916. Established in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane, the facility became widely known as "St. Elizabeths, pictured circa 1900, housed administrative offices and patient wards.
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