Bedraggled and scarred from years of neglect, the west campus of the old St. Elizabeth’s mental hospital has nothing left to offer except her beautiful bones, panoramic views and storied history.

Outside, the gritty southeast Washington neighborhood surrounding the site moves through the daily grind, while the federal guard at the gate is unmoved by entreaties to peek in at the 61 fabled brick buildings that once housed presidential assassins, civil war soldiers and the man they called “the father of the lobotomy.”

However, if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the General Services Administration (GSA)—which owns the 176-acre property and everything on it—get their way, St. Elizabeth’s may just emerge from the mists of time for a second act—or not.

An elaborate plan by DHS to restore and build-out 4.5 million gross square feet in order to move its headquarters there is stuck in the mud. While the agency sees “St. E’s”—which overlooks the Potomac and Anacostia rivers from atop a high bluff—as the perfect place for 14,000 of its now-disparately located employees, others see the plan as a sure way of walling off the parcel’s aesthetic and historic value forever.

“But in reality, it’s a place that’s been locked down for a long time,” said DHS spokesman Larry Orluskie, who says the agency is eager to bring together its employees, now flung across 40 different locations in the greater DC area. He also acknowledges the challenges ahead, like compromising with the critics.

A master plan has been on the table since late last year. DHS incorporates 22 different federal departments and agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration and the US Coast Guard, which would move in during the first phase, said Orluskie.

“The department was put together so we could connect the dots,” he said, pointing out that just a fraction of DHS is housed at the current headquarters on Nebraska Avenue in DC. “[The agencies] were put together for a reason. It doesn’t make sense for us to come this far and then have us spread to the wind across the national capital region.”

But such an ambitious project faces a few speed bumps, the most challenging of which are money and consensus, the latter being an approval process that has brought to the fore a number of historic and community advocates who bemoan both the size and design of the plan. They are skeptical about how such a high-security operation will ever bring life to the depressed neighborhood outside.

Hope and preservation

“People in the neighborhood are looking for economic development,” said Rebecca Miller, executive director of the DC Preservation League. “They’ve been told this project would spur economic development—which we dispute.”

Still others are unsure that DHS—created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks—needs to make itself a bigger target by having such a consolidated presence in Washington.

The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) has veto power over all federal building projects. Back in November, it asked the GSA, which is shuttling the project through the process, to come back with some modifications to its master plan.

“The commission policies … support reusing existing federal land. The concerns are really about the impact of a certain amount of development at a sensitive site,” said David Levy, director of Urban Design and Plan Review at the NCPC.

The commission wants to see a reduction in the number of gross square feet of building space to a maximum of 2.5 million, above ground. They want the design of the new campus to fit better into the landscape in order to limit the impact on the “view shed,” or the views of the campus throughout the immediate area. Some parking should be taken off-campus, or underground, said the commission, and there should be minimal clear-cutting of trees on the wooded parcel. The plans must also comply with statutory requirements in the National Historic Preservation Act.

While the agencies are willing to work on these concerns, the gross square footage suggested by the NCPC is “unacceptable,” said Orluskie. “The 4.5 million gross square feet in the current plan is what we need to get it to work.” He said the DHS plan already calls for new access roads to the nearby interstate to mitigate traffic flow and is sensitive to the environment and the site’s historic integrity.

Either way, simply moving right into the existing buildings on the site is not possible. Some demolition will occur, since the once-stately brick structures are deteriorating at a rapid pace. This will surely take some negotiating between both parties, as well.

A checkered history

The hospital was reportedly home to some 125,000 patients between 1855 and 2002, when the remaining residents were transferred away and the west campus shuttered to the public. Its peak came in the years before mental health was “de-institutionalized” in the 1950s. In its last years, reports indicate that heat and water were constantly on the blink, food and medicine shortages occurred regularly and the buildings were already in decay.

It was a sorry fate for such a storied place, where eminent pioneers in patient care once strolled the gardens and advanced their cutting-edge theories and practices in psychiatry. During the Civil War, it served as a working medical hospital for soldiers, some of whom are buried on the land, as are a number of patients who died there indigent or without family.

There is a bit of a macabre past, too. St. Elizabeth’s once housed Charles Julius Guiteau, who assassinated President James Garfield in 1881. Guiteau stayed there while he was on trial and before he was hanged. The hospital also hosted Richard Lawrence, would-be assassin of President Andrew Jackson in 1835, and John Hinckley, would-be assassin of President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Walter Freeman, the pioneer of the now-discredited practice of the lobotomy—for which he used an ice pick to operate on the frontal lobe of the brain in an attempt to eliminate abnormal behavior and insanity—was the director of laboratories at St. Elizabeth’s. It is said that he performed more than 3,500 lobotomies in his career, but it is not known whether he conducted any at his offices at the hospital.

The property is also an architectural gem. The grand dame, the brick center building, was designed by Thomas Walter, who in 1851 designed the plans for the dome of the United States Capitol. This and many other iconic Washington landmarks are part of the unrivaled view from St Elizabeth’s. But attached to the restoration is a hefty price tag—estimates say it would take somewhere in the range of $3 billion to restore the campus. That has discouraged any other economic development opportunities, up until now.

City support

As a result, invested parties like Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), who represents the District of Columbia in Congress, and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty are happy to see serious interest by the federal government in rehabbing the buildings, not to mention the prospect of bringing some activity and cachet to that part of town.

“The city thinks it’s a great idea,” said Fenty spokeswoman Tracy Sandler. “It’s an adaptive use of historic facilities, which is a common practice around the United States. We fully support [it].”

The city owns the sprawling east campus of St. Elizabeth’s across the street from the west side. It runs the last operating vestiges of the old hospital, including fewer than 500 inpatients—one of them John Hinckley. The District took over the hospital from the federal government in 1986, but has faced occasional charges of neglecting its residents.

On the money side, Congress refused to fund the DHS plans for the west campus this year, leaving the agency hoping for supplemental appropriations. GSA has boldly requested double its annual discretionary funding—$481 million—for 2009, in part to begin the project when the approvals come through. DHS has asked for $120 million, according to Orluskie.

But even if they get the money, the agencies are running an approval gauntlet. “I think there is a lot of concern about turning this resource there into something that is going to be an enclave, essentially insulated from the surrounding community,” said Ted Luebke, secretary of the US Commission of Fine Arts, which has influence, but not veto power, in the process. Their members are among those who wish for more of a “mixed use” of St. Elizabeth’s.

Orluskie said the only alternative, right now, seems to be a ghost town with federal guards at the gate. He acknowledges that public access is not likely to get much better after DHS moves in, but the agency could consider some limited opportunities for the public.

“We will preserve it as much as possible as an historic landmark,” he said, “It’s a win-win. For years, that property has been … untouched, unkempt. In reality, DHS moving out there will bring attention to a property that hasn’t gotten the attention.” HST