St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane

This is the story of a former government insane asylum known for being one of the first places where lobotomies were done. Founded in 1852, the hospital opened originally to provide treatment for the local armed forces members. The hospital began official operations in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane. The campus is spread out between two main areas. One portion of the hospital is currently on a base of a United States Coast Guard area and the other is slowly being demolished and portions renovated for community use such as apartments, libraries, and other institutions. The WNBA team in Washington's arena is on the property.

In the part of the campus that I explored with a good friend of mine, we ventured into three buildings that were all this size (pictured above). Dorothea Dix was a prominent advocate for persons with mental illnesses and the need to have hospitals designed to care for them. She wrote legislation that allowed for the hospital to be established. This portion of the campus is known as the Western Portion. The US Navy used the hospital for service members after it opened in an area originally designated for African American male patients. After the civil war ended, the Army ceased operations at the site and the hospital became known as St. Elizabeth Hospital.

Something that the hospital is known for is during World War II, the hospital held German Prisoners of War. The hospital staff wanted to know why the German POWs behaved the way they did during the war so they produced something referred to as "Truth Serum" to give the patient's under direct observation, likely given in rooms that are pictured above. The serum was created by the ingredients: mescaline and scopolamine, which as a trial on two patients was found to be unsuccessful. The hospital revised their recipe to include THC but that had also proven to be unsuccessful as well.

Another thing that the hospital is known for is autopsies for students and lobotomies. The hospital in their autopsy theater did multiple lobotomies in front of students as a teaching hospital and stored the samples in a filing cabinet. There are no longer bodies in their morgue nor are their students in the theater, but there are still samples in the filing cabinet.

Personal reflections: I visited this hospital three times. The first time I attempted to explore it, my Spidey senses tingled the entire time and I could feel eyes looking at me from the buildings as I walked around the property. I ended up not going into any of the buildings and leaving instantly. The property, I should note, is home to dozens of homeless individuals, they do not enter the buildings, but they sleep on the front steps of the buildings and walk throughout the complex. It honestly reminded me of "The Walking Dead". The second time I visited was with a good friend of mine, we met there and explored three buildings eventually getting spooked in the autopsy theater area by someone walking outside and a loud noise we had heard in that section of the building. We opted to leave the property after exploring three buildings. When I explore, I typically value having someone else with me when I go places for a variety of reasons, but most notably to just have someone to be an extra set of ears when hearing noises. This complex is massive, I wish we would have explored more, but I didn't bring a drink with me and was feeling the effects of dehydration once we finished the second building.

One thing that happens in the community of urban exploring is that people will go to spots just for the "cool shots of one room", in particular at this hospital it would have been the autopsy theater. For me, exploring is so much more than that. I value going through other regions in a campus because you never know what is behind a closed door. For instance, had we just gotten the autopsy theater and left, we never would have seen those observation window rooms. There is an area of the hospital that has a long, almost bar aspect to it, that had we not gone into that building, or down that hall, we wouldn't have known it was there.

Another thing that we wouldn't have noticed had we just skipped straight to the autopsy theater was the administration building. The autopsy theater is off of the administration building, but I have been burned at another facility of not exploring the administration building for all it has to offer, (see a future article about the deadliest children's psychiatric hospital in America). Just in the administration building was this welcome desk, a filling room, and a laboratory room. Of course, looters have already been through the area taking whatever they could find from every drawer and putting graffiti on the walls.

This hospital is full of empty corridors and hundreds of empty rooms likely to be torn down for new institutions. As someone who can feel things and souls looking back as I wander the halls aimlessly looking for reminders of the past, I didn't feel alone in this facility. When we were in the building between the administration building and the autopsy theater building, we had come into a room with a brand new backpack on the floor and what looked like some gym shorts in the bag and some spray paint cans. I had initially been a little weirded out by that and so had my friend, but we decided to stick together in that building. We didn't find the person who left that there, but they were not far away from us. This area features a staircase to a second level that was likely the hospital infirmary building.

On my second visit with my friend, when we got into the autopsy theater room, we set up for our shots of the place. We had to be careful due to the homeless people walking right outside the blown out window for the theater and not being noticed by these folks who consider the grounds, their home. We spent about ten minutes photographing that area. Once we heard the noise that spooked us, we had left and my friend stopped to take a photo of something else. I didn't put two and two together at the time, but there is an awesome photo of an instagram account that I follow that showed a tribute to our troops in a room I did not know was in this facility.

My third and final time visiting this place, I wanted to return and take photos of this room in the other side of the autopsy theater and collect some samples for historical value. The room is the other side of the morgue freezers. I quickly took some photos of the administration building again in areas I had missed, and also took some photos of a water fountain that was very ornately designed, another thing to be missed if only showing up for the autopsy theater. It was clear that there may not be a fourth time to visit as demolition had looked imminent on the autopsy theater building or whatever they planned to do with that room in the future. I quickly shot my photos and left the building. As I was leaving the property which is a giant hole in a fence around the outside of the property, a DC police officer had been driving by at the same time I popped out of fence. He was either looking at his computer or just didn't care, because he didn't stop and he kept on driving.

The autopsy theater graffiti had changed in the few times I had visited it. The first time I remember anyone posting it, the freezer doors in the theater had a giant red hand print on them. The time I visited with my friend, the red hand print was smeared off. The last time I went, pictured about, someone had stenciled DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) on the freezer doors. I liked that the most. If you have gotten this far, and wanted to view my video: feel free to click it below, if not I hope that this one was enjoyable to read. My friend's instagram page is: @st_jawn_of_the_relics or Tombo Rissmiller or Rissmiller's Relics on Facebook.