armory square

Armory Square Hospital was built in the second year of the Civil War, approximately where the National Air and Space Museum stands today. In its three years of existence, the hospital staff treated more than 13,000 wounded and ill patients, the worst cases that could make the train or boat ride from the battlefield.

Dr. Charles Leale, who stopped President Lincoln from succumbing in the box at Ford’s Theatre, worked at Armory Square.

When the hospital closed in 1865, the last issue of the Armory Square Hospital Gazette, said, “One cannot conceive of a gun-shot wound that has not been treated here.”

Source: si.edu, website of the Smithsonian