In 2016-17, GSA collaborated with the National Building Museum to display artifacts, architectural elements, historic photographs, documents, and models of the evolving campus in an exhibit entitled Architecture of An Asylum: St. Elizabeths 1852-2017 (https://www.nbm.org/exhibition/ architecture-asylum-st-elizabeths-1852-2017/). GSA’s National Capital Region worked with museum curators to salvage building artifacts and locate items for exhibit selection and installation. Evocative displays include an iron-grilled doorway to a patient room; scrapbooks; letters; images of early electroshock equipment; dance therapy photographs from the 1960s; patient art; and a spectacular conserved 1904 model created for the St. Louis World’s Fair. Relics of the hospital’s past juxtaposed with images of recent development poignantly informed visitors about changing theories on how to care for the mentally ill and the government’s capacity for improving the quality of life for individuals and communities, culminating in the transformation of the 300-acre campus into a federal workplace, smaller hospital, and mixed-use urban development.
Opposite: Aerial view of St. Elizabeths campus,Washington, D.C. (photo courtesy U.S. Coast Guard) Top: Center Building (black and white photo courtesy Library of Congress; color photo ACHP) Center: Installation view of Architecture of an Asylum: St. Elizabeths 1852-2017 at the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C. (photo courtesy Yassine el Mansouri, National Building Museum) Left: ACHP members on tour at the St. Elizabeths campus
IN A SPIRIT OF STEWARDSHIP: A REPORT ON FEDERAL HISTORIC PROPERTY MANAGEMENT 2018 | 29
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