Walter Reed General Hospital

Walter Reed General Hospital. Former Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As conceived by Major Borden, the Walter Reed General Hospital campus was to focus around a large hospital and administrative building, with separate and symmetrically arranged outbuildings. In 1905, congressional funding provided for construction of the centerpiece Main Hospital, the Barracks, Officers' Quarters and Nurses' Quarters. Beginning in 1915, multiple additions to the Main Hospital were made over the years, transforming the original rectangular building into the sprawling plan of today., The Main Hospital was completed in 1909, featuring red brick and white detailing in the Georgian Colonial Revival style, a fashionable architectural trend at the beginning of the 20th century. Chosen by the Army for its classical principles and formality, the style projected permanence, elegance and stability for the flagship of Army medicine., World War I dictated the need to quickly expand the hospital to accommodate more patients and trumped the formal planning and design of the campus. Construction of temporary frame buildings covering nearly all available land began in 1917 and included barracks, mess halls, hospital wards and other supporting structures., Replace of temporary clinical wards with permanent brick buildings began late in the 1920s with most construction complete by the early 1930s. Most of these permanent wards were located north of the Main Hospital. All but one of these were later razed to make way for construction of large modern buildings in the 1950s (the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) and 1970s (the new hospital, Heaton Pavilion).