FORT WORTH, Texas - A skeleton crew keeps the lights on at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, which closed in 2011 under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission process. Its storied past will not be forgotten, thanks to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photographic inventory and historic walking tour organized for the 66-acre campus that is being repurposed for a new use.
The historic Walter Reed Army Medical Center is a ghost town now.
Deer and foxes roam the 66-acre campus where 10,000 people once lived and worked. It was here in the nation's capital that untold thousands of soldiers - and presidents, too - were treated for 102 years.
The sprawling facility in Washington's northwest corner was closed in 2011 under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission process. The medical facilities by then had already relocated seven miles away to the "new" Walter Reed - the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
Today a skeleton crew keeps the lights on at the "old" Walter Reed - but it's only a temporary. The campus is being repurposed with new tenants in old buildings, but Walter Reed's storied past won't be forgotten.
Joseph Murphey, an historical architect for the Regional Planning and Environmental Center, made sure of that as part of a larger team of environmental professionals.
Mobile District, which has the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lead in BRAC compliance under the National Environmental Policy Act, brought in Murphey to be the lead on the NEPA's cultural resource requirements. Walter Reed was one of the largest facilities shuttered under BRAC 2005, along with Fort Monmouth, N.J., and Fort McPherson and Fort Gillam in Atlanta, Ga.
For the first time in its history, Murphey completely inventoried and identified everything at Walter Reed and determined what was historic. He then, as part of the NEPA team, negotiated a memorandum of agreement with the DC State Historic Preservation Office and local historic preservation societies to mitigate the effect of the BRAC closure on the historic resources, which fulfilled NEPA requirements.
"The mitigation primarily consisted of nominating Walter Reed to the National Register of Historic Places, photo documenting the entire facility for the National Archives and producing interpretive panels for the public" said Murphey. "The interpretive panels are to be placed on site and tell the storied history of Walter Reed as an institution."
Murphey collaborated in the development of these 14 storyboards, which will be displayed on seven free-standing panels this year along a walking tour of the campus. It narrates the 150-year story of the site back to its pre-med days as a Civil War battlefield.
The first panel outlines the Battle of Fort Stevens in 1864. President Lincoln came under fire from sharpshooters in trees that later became part of the medical complex. It was the only time a sitting U.S. president would come under fire during battle, Murphey said.
The walking tour panels narrate the dream of Maj. William Cline Borden, more than a hundred years ago, to consolidate four different medical facilities located in south and central District of Columbia into a single site. The Army surgeon named the complex for his friend and colleague, Maj. Walter Reed, who led the team that helped eradicate yellow fever by identifying the mosquito as carrier of the disease. Reed died in 1902. (While the hospital named for Walter Reed was built in 1909, Borden's vision would not be fully realized until 1955.)
Walter Reed later become home to what was considered the first school of public health and preventive medicine in the world, and developed vaccines to prevent hepatitis A, meningococcal meningitis and adenovirus.
As part of the cultural resources mitigation, Murphey compared his new photographs with historic photos and original construction drawings. The data will aid the local redevelopment authority.
"The information that we gave them formed the baseline for them to start the work on the restoration," said Murphy. "It forms a time capsule on what it looked like when the Army left Walter Reed."
For some shots, Murphey used a large-format camera, which makes 4-inch-by-5-inch negatives. The camera and tripod, with a hood that covers the operator, resembles the equipment Matthew Brady's team used to photograph the Civil War. One hundred of these photos will be delivered to the Library of Congress Historic American Buildings Survey, which requires a negative processed to last at least 500 years.
Clay Church, Public Affairs Specialist, Fort Worth District, contributed to this report.
More images: www.flickr.com/photos/wramc/sets
Video interview: www.dvidshub.net/video/373817/wramc-panels-joseph-murphey
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