Portsmouth Naval Hospital

About this property

The Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP), formerly Naval Hospital Portsmouth, and originally Norfolk Naval Hospital, is a United States Navy medical center in Portsmouth, Virginia, United States. It is the oldest continuously running hospital in the Navy medical system. The historic Portsmouth Naval Hospital building was designed by architect John Haviland (1792–1852) and built in 1827. It is a three-story granite and Freestone building on a 12-foot (3.7 m) basement. Its form is that of a hollow rectangle, measuring 172 feet (52 m) wide by 192 feet (59 m) deep. The front facade features a 92 feet (28 m) wide Doric order portico with ten columns. The building's interior was reconstructed in 1907, and a shallow dome was added to the roof. Located on the property are a contributing marker erected by Haviland over the grave of Major John Saunders, one time commander of Forts Nelson and Norfolk, who died March 15, 1810; and a memorial cannon commemorating Fort Nelson. Fort Nelson, now demolished, was near the hospital's site. The hospital staff has a long tradition of providing service to the fleet. In the summer of 1832 during a massive cholera outbreak, naval doctors, nurses, and attendants remained on duty caring for patients throughout the epidemic, working heroically to check the ravages of the disease and to allay patients' fears. In 1798, Congress established the “Hospital Fund” to provide medical treatment that formerly had been administered to officers, sailors and marines ashore in sail lofts, storerooms or other work spaces at Gosport Shipyard. By 1821, enough money had been collected to build naval hospitals in key ports. In 1830, the Navy's first hospital opened in Portsmouth. Before then, what is now Hospital Point was the site of Fort Nelson. That fort had protected the area from the British during the Revolutionary War. Several decades later, Fort Nelson fell into disrepair from neglect when Fort Monroe became the protector of the harbor. Construction of the hospital began in 1827. Workers removed more than 500,000 bricks from Fort Nelson and re-used them in the hospital's foundation and inner walls. In 1830, Surgeon Thomas Williamson was ordered to make the hospital ready to receive patients. Dr. Williamson became medical director of the nation's first naval hospital. It is on the National Register of Historical Places. Through the early nineteenth century, both Norfolk (Gosport) Navy Yard and Naval Hospital extensively utilized enslaved labor (see thumbnails 1815 payroll and 1832 hospital muster). On January 2, 1832, in a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Commodore Lewis Warrington confirmed enslaved labor at the hospital. Warrington stated " I knew that for ten years, that mode has been pursued without complaint or representation against it. In that time several Surgeons attached to the Hospital and several captains in command of the Yard all of whom acquiesced in it." In a January 5, 1832, followup Warrington clarified that the hospital's female enslaved workers and their children had separate sleeping quarters."[In] assigning reasons for the employment of Washers [laundresses] at the Hospital, I omitted to state that they were fixed in an outhouse at a considerable distance from the establishment and had no intercourse with it, but such as was allowed by the medical officer, consequently neither they nor their children could occasion any inconvenience or produce any irregularity." Most of the staff took their meals (victualed) at the hospital. The enslaved workers and probably the steward Samuel McFall (white) and doorkeeper William Fell (white) lived on the grounds. At the hospital enslaved African Americans worked in wide variety of occupations as nurses, attendants, hospital cooks, washers/laundresses, boatmen and gravediggers. In 1832 Madeline Flanders (see thumbnail) was the first woman listed as a hospital nurse.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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