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The St. Elizabeths East Gateway Pavilion.

Threshold of Change:

The St. Elizabeths
East Gateway Pavilion

by Ronald O’Rourke

View from the roof of the pavilion toward some Photo © Eric Taylor
of the historic buildings of the East Campus.
St. Elizabeths Hospital—properly spelled with no
Photo © Davis Brody Bond apostrophe—opened in 1855 as the first federally operated
psychiatric hospital in the country. Built on a bucolic site
12 THRESHOLD OF CHANGE in the Anacostia area of southeast DC, the hospital grew
rapidly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but
changes in mental health protocols beginning in the 1950s
led to a steep decline in the number of patients housed
there. The hospital was later consolidated into a smaller
facility on the institution’s East Campus, control of which
was transferred to the DC government. The federal
government retained ownership of the West Campus,
which is now being redeveloped as the headquarters
of the Department of Homeland Security and its
constituent agencies.

Project: St. Elizabeths East Gateway Pavilion,

Washington, DC

Architects: Davis Brody Bond
Landscape Architects: Gustafson Guthrie Nichol
Structural Engineers: Robert Silman Associates
MEP Engineers/Sustainability and Lighting Consultants: WSP

Flack + Kurtz
Civil Engineers: A. Morton Thomas & Associates
General Contractor: KADCON Corporation