years old now. last 25 at least i've historicaltrating on stuff. >> i would like to thank out today.r coming [applause] to remindd like everyone that he will have books for sale. >> i'll be setting up out there some morealk to you and if you want to buy my book great, if not, we can just talk, i guess. [laughter] >> you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. to join the conversation, like history.ebook at cspan

>> each week, american history artifacts visits museums and historic places. up next, a visit to the national learn abouteum to the exhibit architecture of an st. elizabeth's, 1852 to 2017. known as the government hospital the insane when it opened, d.c.d a you of washington, at its peak in 1960, st. elizabeth's had almost 8,000 and covered 300 acres. it is still open today. this hour long program, usator sarah levit shows what architecture can reveal about how the mentally ill were cared for over time. this decided to do exhibition for many reasons, one of which i think it's a real important moment to be talking the role of the federal government in providing public and providing healthcare for the mentally ill.

>> also right now, at st. elizabeth's in d.c., it's really a time where they're develop the land, it's now split into two halves, halfederal government owns of it and it will become the department of homeland security, which is something that's happening right now and also development is really starting on the east campus, which is city of washington, d.c., it's a really interesting time to start talking about that since they're really moving starting that development process. this is a great hall as we call old u.s. pension building. the building from 1887 was built their familiesd to come get their pensions, war veterans, but also from other earlier wars, some of their family members who were still alive and it was the pension building for many v.a., thetil the veterans administration kind of took that over and then it was owned by the federal government, it was an office building, the 1980s.seum in

we're going to start our story in the 1850s by looking at in mentalpening healthcare at that time, and some people who were trying to change what's happening by building these large asylums. so come on in. our exhibition, here we're going to start by looking at some architectural the originalm building at st. elizabeth's, which is called the center building, that's the building en1855. built we're going to learn a lot more about that building in the of 80ide style, one hospitals that were built in that style for mental health patients in the 19th century latter half of the 19th century. so we start the exhibition in here by looking at some of those architectural fragments i mentioned as well as some patient art. that we'll seegs throughout the exhibition is art that was done by patients either therapy or just recreationally. this piece was actually on the the plaster wall of the building it depicts, which is

the center building. we're going to come on here and start talking about our story those two ideas which are the history of mental healthcare thealso the land use at site at st. elizabeth's. here we talk a little bit about our definition of mental health has changed over time, look a little bit at some diagnoses of patients, and then we're looking at how did people mentally ille should be cared for, what should happen to them, how should they home, which at happened certainly, a lot, still does, or if they should be cared a hospital, separate purpose built institution. theertainly before mid19th century there were a lot of different places where you would find the mentally ill, in jail or almshouses, poor. for the and a reformer at the time hundred of these types of places all around the country.

in fact, she traveled the world the really terrible, wretched conditions. she was a sunday school teacher, taught, she's a christian teacher, and she really believed empathy instead of hardship was really the way to treat really -- she also firmly believed that it was the role of the government, specifically the government and private organizations to help treat people and really her life to changing the situation for the mentally ill. places that she wanted to really make a difference in terms of how the were treated was here in washington, d.c. so she came to d.c. and she worked with interior,ary of the she talked to the president of the united states and she also worked with thomas kirkbride who i alluded to earlier. a physician who worked with the mentally ill who had a lot of very specific ideas

of architecture could actually cure the patients. she worked with him and she found, she identified the land. and if you come over here, you is the land that she found and the photo over originalhe farm, the farm that was at the site. farmicks convinced the owner and his wife to sell the land to the federal government, did in 1852 and that's where they sited the hospital, we call it st. elizabeth's. originally, it was called the thernment hospital for insane. so i mentioned dorothy, she was part of a larger movement. it certainly wasn't just her although we really honor her with a lot of really hard work decades,did over the she was part of the moral treatment movement. project of the new enlightenment in the mid- to late 19th century. of peoplelly a lot who really had a different idea with how to treat those

mental illness. they used the word empathy a lot. this idea of moral treatment, the way that people would be treated well, and then help cure in turn them so she really believed the architecture and that the different kind of treatment could cure the patients. cure the patients? you know, it depended on what what,symptoms were and you know, if they had a brain disease, no. but empathy and fresh air and sheof these treatments that and other proponents really believed in certainly went a lives,y to making their you know, at least more comfortable as long as the conditions were right in the building. more in ato that little bit, i wanted to show you here, her desk on which she legislation to open the government hospital for the insane in the 1850s.

donated the desk to st. elizabeth's hospital and plaque on toply a of the desk that you can see in the upper left corner where she to heres this desk colleagues at the hospital, especially superintendent nichols, the first the hospital. of the desk then sat there at the hospital for many years, probably about a century, and was later given to the smithsonian, to the museum of american history, national american history which owns it today. we borrowed it from them. so here before we enter what we asylum, age of the before we get into the story of st. elizabeth's itself we look the a little bit at treatment of mental illness and how that has changed over time at some of the ways that the treatment had to do with the architecture of the building. let's gole, actually, over here so you can see the

hydrotherapy baths. lucky in this exhibition to have the opportunity to use 20 original architectural drawings from the library of congress collection, so this one that shows the hired therapy baths, which were beatment baths, they would either all hot to calm a patient or cold to stimulate a patient, they also would do wraps to wrap up the patient in wet blankets, but the idea with the drawing here is that this treatment was connected to the building, so was part of the infrastructure of the site, which matters because in buildings, you have different groups of patients. white men would get the treatment first because it would in their building where they lived and then white women, and then african-american patients that, several years after that. so it really -- when the thetment is connected to architecture that way you can see the story of how treatment differs for different patients symptoms over time and that's something we want to look at. st. elizabeth's, they used a

lot of different treatments over the years. it's had a very long history. so we see here some examples of art therapy and dance therapy, which are two things i do want point out. we showed throughout the show, we look at throughout the show story of a architecture and the change of architecture over time. it's not particularly a story of patients but one way that i wanted to get the patient voices in the exhibition is to so a lot of patient art you'll see a little more of that here. this is a fantastic piece and actually, there's a really interesting article that goes through all the different symbols in the piece, there's a of religious symbols in it, it was done by a patient at and there'sh's various biblical scenes, the virgin mary appears, the idea here was that she was working through some trauma with the piece. it's now owned by the national museum of health and medicine. loaned several pieces to us.

case,o have right in this a magic lantern slide, they have a collection of several hundred those and you can see it's kind of disturbing, you have a man lying peacefully in bed and having a nightmare in which is sitting on a turtle holding a lobster and a sword and the idea there was a pretty popular for patientsique who needed to be stimulated in and you would open -- they would project the slides, slide open the image to show something very disturbing and startling to the patients. the collection you can see several hundred different versions of things, terrible that befall people, falling off ladders and having terrible dreams and all kinds of things. it sounds a little disturbing, but the idea was to shock the patient. is -- yeah, this is what's potentiometer.

was usedtechnique that also to kind of shock the stimulate their whole system, it's something int's still used today certain -- certain -- for certain patients under certain not this type, of course, mid20th century machine, but a much more improved version. this right here is marion chase, dance therapist and she was an innovator and a pioneer of dance herepy and she's working with patients, which i do think has to do also with moving space, moving bodies through the spaces of the building, so it's not specifically an architecture story, but it does have to do with how patients are moving, moving through the spaces at st. elizabeth's. so we're going to now get under age of thedo the asylum. the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century, it's

long period, it grows and then wanes, of the separate we would people who are different in some ay into an asylum into separate area away from the stresses of the city and also from all the people that lived there to really separate them out, hopefully, to treat them but also as a way kind of that to beerse of able to ignore them also from that'sger society so certainly something you see throughout that century, that the ends when you get to deinstitutionalization in the '70s and '80s. latest talk a little bit about thomas kirkbride. a physician, pennsylvania, he worked with mental health patients, and he decided that the architecture was a way to become a cure for the patients, the architecture landscapee architecture itself would be a cure for the patients so he book in the 1850s,

the where he described guidelines. he had worked with a lot of different physician, a lot of to thist places, came kind of conclusion that there was some guidelines that people this follow to build particular kind of hospital and this is an example of the floor that telltaled of v. shape like a bird in flight out the wings radiating from the central core there and the idea was that in that central core would be the offices, the home of the superintendent, and his family if he had one, and then the patient wards would radiate out from the center, the women on one side, the men on the side, this was all for white patients at st. elizabeth's. the african-american patients in separate buildings and that was true at most mental health hospitals. also, the different patients with different symptoms would live in different areas. the ones with more severe the ends, ofon course, the farthest away from the superintendent who would be in the middle.

the idea also with those radiating wings was that the patients would have ventilation in intoral light coming all their individual rooms. which is a big difference when have some floor plans to show of the houses theyican were called the lodges for the colored insane at st. elizabeth's and they did not have individual rooms. they did not have that ventilation and light coming in way, more dormitory style. the architecture already is telling a story about how the theents were treated at hospital. if you come in this way at -- heree can look i can show you right here on this map, in terms of waselizabeth's, the idea again with the building, you can see that shape right there, this topographical map from 18 60, and here they're labeled the two, here and here and those are the west lodge and the lodge, which you can see here identified right there, insane.or the colored

another important thing about this plan is you can really see the landscape. is almost just as important as the architecture. startingee they were some farm areas, there's trees that are planted and also there's a view, the view out the building onto this confluence of the rivers there, potomac. that was really important to get that therapeutic view as they called it so the landscape itself was part of the therapy. and you can see as we come in here, one of the things i wanted look at was how the kirkbride plan happened all over the country. so it's a story that's not just here in washington, d.c. at the hospital but also at the state level, all these different hospitals. a map where you can see, about 80 of them, i think 78 that we've identified all over country. obviously, more towards the east coast, and then some on the west coast, as well. this is the one from my home

state in madison, wisconsin. you can see behind me there's one from utah, you can see the there.ns and all over the country. one interesting thing that you'll start to recognize the shape of the building, of different,y all look they all had different different, they had architecture and they're just really, really beautiful 19th centuryate institutional architecture in the united states. and many of them have been restored and are now today serving other uses. we talk about some of those stories here. said that, ofg that almost 80 that were built, about 34 remain. you can see from that map, a lot of them have been demolished. the ones that are still around, there's a lot of groups that are trying to save them and preserve not only the beautiful buildings but also the ustory that they can help remember. so i talked a little bit about

fragmentstectural that came out of the center building and that's what you'll see here, here we have some of ventilation grills, the window bars, you can see one of the reasons that we wanted these so prominent here in the design is you can really see the idea, this was a decorated building, a decorative building, kirkbride did not want these to look like prisons. people.homes for and so he really paid attention to the details and all the worked on the buildings really followed that through their design. here's some brings that were used, the patients themselves firing, of the brick st. elizabeth, the bricks were fired on campus from clay that there. here we have one of everyone's the dog object is footprint at some point in the 1850s, a dog walked by, tend brick and left it in the file and of course, we found it, years later.

there it is. so all of these architectural this door, they actually came out of the building. the building right now, the theer building is in process of a lot of change and it will be, we'll see and drawings of it a little later, but it will become the home of secretary of the department of homeland security so it will be reused as a 21st century office building. here we talked a little bit about the segregation at st. elizabeth's, it was segregated for its first 100 years from right off the bat through 1954 through the federal desegregation laws. and you can see one of the that does is provide different, separate housing for patients,n-american this is the west lodge for men is a floor plan of the east lodge and you can see the

dormitory style is much patients, the the white patients at the center building. one of the things that i was when doingrested in, the research for this show is to talk about how st. elizabeth's was separated from the rest of the city by a wall or a fence for most of its history so of that motif of the wall going through the show. and this is an example just of architectural drawing of one somee gates, and then images, this is what you would sigh if you're driving down the street in washington, d.c. and fences see the everywhere, that's the public the campus to the rest of the city. that's the daily census, what they called the count of patients at the hospital on any day. this one is set to march of 1963 because that was the height of the patient population on campus. so that's why it's set to that date. that population grew and grew and grew basically its entire

century, a story of population growth, there's a lot of different reasons for that, otherrtainly lack of places to go and changes in differentand rise in kinds of things, alcoholism and neurosyphilis over the course of the 20th century, tuberculosis, there's a different diseases, the patients who also suffered from would come to assistant elizabeth's. it was also the hospital for the army and the navy as well as the citizens of d.c. so they had this extra population that was coming in. that relationship ended at the end of world war ii in 1946 with the rise of the veterans v.a.istration, the hospitals is where those patiented would be transferred point.hat but anyway, this is an example of, first of all, the way they count people by men and women and white and colored as you see and also just to represent that rise in population over

that first century. colored probably also incorporated at st. elizabeth's not only african-american patients, but also other people including native americans. there was a small, but constant of native americans in the 20th century. they did have another federal called theat was canton asylum for insane indians, which is in south dakota, but that was closed down 1933 after -- which was the cabinet role that ran these hospitals, when he took over, he kind of reevaluated the bureau of indian affairs and had them go check things out and do an investigation. one of the things that they did was close down that asylum, they decided that a lot of the there were not actually mentally ill, sent them home and the rest of the patients came to st. elizabeth's at that point. and then many of them lived the rest of their lives at the thereal so we know certainly were other patients of color throughout the 20th century.

patient was identified as what race, there's of work actually that's been done about that by various scholars who have looked more patient records and the easy answer is it depended who was looking at the records. the patients who were thenmore money treated better and i did talk to one scholar who's working on story of an african-american patient whose his residencer and that put him in the center westing instead of the best lodge. that might have happened more than once. of how their diseases were categorized based on their race, that certainly happened, as well. of examples of scholars, for example, coming to karl jung came to study african-american patients to see if they were

different from the dreams of white patients so there was a lot of interest in that. and then also, certainly how they were treated definitely was different depending on their and also gender over time for sure. also their sexuality. whole other issue that we haven't talked about yet. absolutely there were patients were being treated for the supposed mental illness of being so that was a whole other way that they would separate patients and the treatment might have been different. that one doesn't have as much of an architectural component, racial segregation did. here's a little bit of information about the superintendents, the leadership. above me is charles nichols, the superintendent. that's probably also patient art, that was another one they us.out of the wall for it was out of plaster in the building that had deteriorated time. first five superintendents that throughfrom the 1850s

1962, those men, they were all presidents of the professional association of of mentaldents hospitals that became the american psychiatric association. pretty prominent people in their field and all of those people were superintendents at st. elizabeth's. we look at those five first superintendents as that time,ical story of the 110 years, that really means there was a lot of continuity of time.ship over that so here's some of our objects here shows some of that story of the administration of the hospital. one of the things, though, is to look here at the investigation, there's so many of these, we want to make sure i say that, that st. elizabeth's was under investigation by congress. one of the advantages from a

historian's point of view of st. elizabeth's being the federal hospital is because they're in the congressional record they're easily available so any researcher can go look at them and see kind of how the was arguing for various things over time in terms of justifying the discharges of patients, they were under attack a lot for different treatments, food, other kinds of repairs to the buildings that weren't happening. really trace that over time throughout all of these investigations. the first superintendent, in fact, dr. nichols once wrote to dorothy dicks, they had a long correspondence over the years, he wrote that he felt as though a volcanoliving over because there was so much happening both with the congressional investigations and just also so many things that he had to do and worry about and constant change and about overcrowding and funding and all of that over time. there's two cemeteries at st. elizabeth's. on the west campus and the east

campus. campus is the older part of the campus, and then the several thousand graves, many of them unmarked. tore's in process the idea put a memorial to patients that are resting in unmarked graves at all of the government sponsored hospitals around the aretry because there thousands of them around the country, that memorial hasn't happened yet, but the cemetery still there, of course, and the military graves are marked, but there's thousands of patients that died, they called it friendless, that had nobody up.ick them they're still there. and then just a little bit about war, during the civil war at the hospital, it was used a general hospital in addition,tites role as a mental health hospital and that's when the namearted using st. elizabeth's instead of the government hospital for the insane which the soldiers who patients there didn't want to use that term.

the original's was name of the land tract so they went back to using st. elizabeth's. it was officially changed in 1916, which is interesting because st. elizabeth, she's a patron saint of healing, which is a nice coincidence. so the original architecture of the central building proved insufficient to house all the patients so they looked at different types of architectures. you see the growth of the cottage plan. howard hall is a different howard hall was the -- they called the home for insane criminal. these are people who were the courts.care by we call them forensic patients now and you can see the shape of originaling, the courtyard was inside that shape.

you're looking at here is a 1911 that they're for more money to build a fence around the whole building so patients can be outside. did in fact, build that hall stood asd they calledr what insane criminals at the time until the 1950s. and then this building was and they built a much larger building called john and thatvilion building was then demolished a ago, but thats building took over this function. cottages,e here some some of these smaller buildings on campus, the idea was that the building where all the functions of the hospital were in the one building wasn't really tenable when there was and more and more patients and the expansion of the patient population really changed the

architecturehe itself would cure the patient. the idea of the cottage plan was and ahe smaller building more home like atmosphere would be more beneficial to the patients. here's your more prominent patients that you might be about certainly almost every single person when i talksn st. elizabeth's either about them, those are two the most famous patients. there were so many thousands of st. elizabeth's that are more anonymous and we don't know much more about their than that they were here. several's certainly attempted presidential assassins, including richard lawrence who tried to assassinate president jackson. guteau whoe charles shot president garfield and we with john hinckley who tried to assassinate president

reagan. throughout the century, many of these patients found themselves st. elizabeth's. many of the superintendents at st. elizabeth's, because of their prominence in the field on at these trials and superintendent godding, for example, testified at guteau's trial and he really wanted that guilty byhat not reason of insanity to be invoked so a lot of the doctors and the superintendents at the hospital really believed that that should be used more often. its controversial over time, certainly was in the news week about, that we have here about whether that should even be allowed. so it's certainly controversial over time. st. elizabeth's was almost a self-sufficient campus. call nowfarm, what we the east campus, what used to be the farm, that was a farm that

dairy farm. you can see the milk bottles and they're labeled st. elizabeth's the bottle. they had their own dairy farm here. they also had fruit trees and greenhouses and a lot of other piggeries.ngs, we have the horse stables behind me. many of the patients themselves worked on the farm. hired more and more staff and it was more of a professional staff and as the campus grew and grew and grew and they built more and more structures for patients around the 20th century, there was a pretty major expansion. they built onto the east campus further farmland in oxenhill, maryland, and 1980s, theby the farm was starting to shut down and they were just purchasing most of their food elsewhere so , of thetory kind of o first century of the hospital

the therapy part of at the time. they believed that hard work would be good for the patients, the patientsall of had the opportunity to work on the farm. certainly, the women, for be more tended to inside doing jobs, such as laundry and food preparation and the white men probably had more opportunity to work with and different types that.s like however -- so the farm was part of the work therapy, it was part the rural view, hospital.tion for the in fact, many of the superintendents thought the idea agrarian kind of utopia was this idea that the contribute to that. and when st. elizabeth's itself was first built there in the 1850s, it was really on the rural outcart of the city. around itind of grew and neighborhoods started, especially in the 1920s and

30s, the neighbors started encroaching on the hospital, but for its first several decades it rural area.ut in a this is one of my favorite pieces of the whole show, this from 1904, itdel was made first for the world's fair of 1904 in st. louis, it was displayed as part of the the interior's display of their work on behalf people of the united states, and then it was added onto in the 1930s and it was then around again for world's fairs of the 1930s. in this model see the growth of the campus across this road. the campushat slices in half, this is called the west campus. see was the first, you can the center building in there, that v-shaped building and then the east campus which was first a farm that was 1860s, and then obviously became space for patient housing.

most of the buildings that you here on this model, not all of them, but most of them still stand. so this is really a beautiful theto kind of see how large campus was and how then the city it. of grew around the congress heights metro, for example, is over here, and then fence, you can see this tiny little wall, it goes heres the whole campus and it is. over by mlk. fence it was first called asylum road asylum.it led to the it was then called nichols avenue after the first inerintendent, and then 1971, in that period of home rule when washington, d.c. is takingg to think about back some of this land from the federal government in 1971, they street martin luther king avenue so that's what it is now. but there's still that fence that surrounds the campus and that really separates the campus

the city.est of so yeah, there's a couple of new buildings, of course, that have been built since this model was built. there's many of the huge patient 1940s throughhe the 1960s that were built after this model, and then since demolished. and then there's a couple, probably the major new here would be the coast guard building which is over here that's part of the new department of homeland security construction and then the new in 2010 which was built and that's where all the hospital functions were insolidated to that site 2010 and that's over by the cemetery, way in the corner east campuss the cemetery and then right kind of south, below that is where the is now. this right here, these buildings, they are in the being converted into apartments. so this is the half of the andus that the city owns this is where the entertainment center will go, where the wizards will practice and the

mystics will play, that whole complex and all of that city development is happening on this side. this is an example of something, one of the things that's on this thel that no longer exists, semi-permanent buildings and those were constructed after i to house all the patients coming, the veterans coming after the war and they world war iiugh and housed veterans from world war ii, and then they were that.shed after and then you can see howard hall there with the wall around it that i spoke about before, for the so-called criminally insane. so that's demolished now, that's no longer there. that's about where the coast guard building is now. life like for patients on st. elizabeth's campus? a ridiculousurse, question to pose and answer because there's thousands of years and also50 even patients on the same day on hadsame campus would have vastly different experiences depending on their symptoms,

gender, race, how long they had been there. but we try to point out a little andof activity on campus things that are available to the make their try to lives pleasant. here, it was the auditorium for psychodrama, drama therapy and they showed movies there and had the opportunity for some entertainment, as well. there was, of course, sports, music, there's music and sports people'sg part of lives. ad they had -- this plan for grandstand for the baseball grounds. ofe are some examples patients playing badminton and boxing. there's probably a racial dimension in terms of what sports were offered to different patients. a gentleman playing baseball here, so certainly there were a of recreation opportunities. the library would have been a

somepportunity for patients to be able to read other types of books. we did find a catalog of books that were available at the library. we also had a patient newsletter. so we certainly found examples of over of different types entertainment and ways that that was connected to how the moved around the campus. there's a beauty shop that they could get to, there was a chapel. at first the chapel was in the center building, they didn't have a separate chapel building until 1955 so for its first differenthey had types of services for different denominations right there in the center building. were patients from every religion. ofve seen some examples people coming from different religious groups from d.c. into to lead services. for example, jewish services or passover seder, things like that. most of the chapel was based on

protestant christian worship, but they did have a chaplain who would talk to patients and they that opportunity. all these images on this wall are kind of telling that story the expansion of the campus and you can really see the growth through various different plans and site maps. this is one of my favorite architectural drawings because it shows the underpass, under avenue to get people and cars,t the time when the it was horses and wagons and other kinds of transportation, people from the west campus to the east campus so it tells that story of the theysion of the campus, all of a sudden need to move a lot more people at the turn of the 20th century as they're constructing more patient buildings on the east campus, so that's what this underpass represents. another aspect, important aspect of daily life on campus was the medical care. a nursing school on the campus and medical research was something that was really

campus as welle so you can see here are some of some equipment that wasused, glassware that used in the lab. st. elizabeth's had one of the busiest laboratories, the blackburn lab after isaac blackburn, one of the there.hers and they were doing a lot of important neurological research theespecially studies of brains of the mentally ill, that was one of their major contributions and we have a book page has aevery brain image of a different patient, and then a discussion see that mental illness in the neuropathology of the brain. so that was something they were to work on with autopsies and we have a here, this is a much later photograph from 2005 after gallery had closed, but it really shows the importance of research to what was happening at

st. elizabeth's. wanted to understand the brains of the mentally ill, treat peopleto medically. some of the research that they did especially on alzheimer's still useda is today, absolutely. medicalnk, you know, research always builds on itself right so they really provided of how peoplesis mentalll learning about illness. we talked about the first 110 thes of the hospital from 1850s into the 1960s, so for that aget 110 years, of the asylum, the population is growing. 1960s in the mid-20th a reallythere was different understanding of the buildings. campuses,sented huge empathy and that moral treatment years patient, after 100 people sard thinking of them more as warehouses, separating

societyople from unnecessarily and against their will and there was a lot of movement to try to get the back out of these hospitals. patient rights movements were growing during this time. also, because of better research and understanding of the medicalization of mental healthcare and understanding how and research and to discover drugs that could help patients live on their own, that come to aertainly has point by the late 20th century where many patients could live hadheir own that would have more trouble before. so that in combination with the movement andts with the reluctance of the federal government to spend the amount of money that they needed housing these people, all of those things came together in the late 20th century. it started with president 1963, when he a couple of weeks before he died

madelly signed a bill and a speech about mental health and mental retardation funding and idea was that instead of these large custodial hospitals, patients would be able to get care in community mental health clinics and he envisioned a network of 1,500 of these clinics all over the country. however, that never came to pass. and he did start the process of closing down the big hospitals, the federaling, funding for those clinics never so several hundred of them were built and itselfzabeth's transferred part of it into a health clinic,l but in terms of a nationwide happened.that never and you can see that funding decrease and decrease and, of the omnibus budget bill of 1981 which was reagan's budget, president reagan's in 1981 really cut off the end of the federal funding for mental healthcare.

thathat's something certainly we're still discussing today in the new healthcare medicaidout especially funding for mental healthcare. so it's certainly something that with andtruggled continue to. so as we go under this deinstitutionallation arch we kind of find out what happened to st. elizabeth's during that time. here's a floor plan where they're changing over one of the d.,ent buildings, alison into the community mental health center. basically, these custodial, the beingntial buildings are transferred over into more havetient buildings and we some examples of these booklets which are trying to explain that is from 1971 one and explaining the process of the '60s in in terms of separating out the federal hospital into more localized community healthcare. here iss booklet right discussing community outreach towards the hispanic population.

so that's something we haven't about before, but we really see that by the 1970s, a much-increased population of different groups thet. elizabeth's and administrators are dealing with that in various ways. so even though deinstitutionalization happens and we often think about that as the time when the hospital wanes down, there's still thousands of patients at st. elizabeth's, still a working hospital through the 20th century, still a working hospital today. like i said, with almost 300 beds. still -- and certainly more patients than that who are getting outpatient care as well it's still a hospital during that time. however, having said that, you the model, you understand that there was -- there had been buildings onst 100 campus. as the population wanes, you that many buildings so what happens to all those buildings and that's part of our story, as well. left of the materials behind, you can see the center building, all boarded up,

warehoused. moth-balled as they call it in the government when they want to building, but they don't know what to do with it quite yet so they closed it up. a lot of stuff was left behind there. these are just some examples of things that we picked out that muchfound in the building later on. these huge buildings that were -- that are now, you know, sitting empty with the paint peeling. it's a poignant reminder of this infrastructure that we once had mentally illhe that we have basically -- it's basically gone now and really into something else. the new photograph of hospital from 2010 and as i mentioned certainly there are patients there, but also, we're still working as a nation, as a on what to do with patients who are mentally ill, how to help them, how to help integrate people into society and also help them, you know,

their own andon these are just some headlines from 2016om the news about maybe how we haven't quite answered all those questions yet. just a note about the exhibition. we show three documentaries here, a little theater, pieces of three documentaries. one is from 1955. is from 1989 and all of them voices in that story, bringing those patients into the story, what do they their care isw being administered. just likea dream, martin luther king had a dream and my dream is to have one day go together, all of us leave, nobody's too bad to go. >> i called my sister out in missouri and told her i was said what?and she but yeah. doing something. and lord knows i hope it breaks stigma about

mental illness. >> how could society forget we were and more what we are. >> when we started out we were talking about the architecture of mental healthcare and also use at the site at st. elizabeth's so this is where story, with the west campus here and then we'll look at the east campus. is now -- it's still owned by the federal government, as it has been since 1852. and it is now set to become the home of the department of homeland security. a model of the add-on, the west wing addition to the center building. you can see the center building is the add on, the new part down here so you can see how they're transforming, they're planning transform this space into office space for all the different agencies that make up homelandtment of security.

so you can see the center is what it looked fall.ast it's -- it was basically gutted and going to be rebuilt from the ground up, literally, and this is a rendering of the idea of what it's going to look like secretary of homeland security has his or her offices in a couple of years. the coast guard i think i mentioned is already there, this is the coas coast guard's buildg from the top. green roof.it has a as they'rethe plans taking pieces out of the building, for example, this stencil, they'll paint that back up on the wall so that the beter building will recognizable in its new incarnation. ae dining hall is actually really beautiful example of historic preservation. the 1855 architectural drawing for the dining hall for

they separated into the cottage plan, the patients were then eating, living and eating in separate buildings. in center building they were all eating in the same place. example of the change in the way the architecture worked for the patients in the century. anyways, it's a dining hall again today. it,gfa has restored complete with the interior view of it now. of course, the picnic tables are new. but it now serves again its original purpose so that's kind preservationtoric story. move into looking at what's at the east campus and how the city grew around the east campus in the 20th century, and then kind of a little bit of what's happening there today. here's -- it's a great picture that moment that i talked about earlier in 1971 where they're changing the street sign avenue to mlk avenue. it's just a real triumphant city, although we know now that even though the iny took back that land

1987, they still haven't these years all later. it's decades later that the city thatill kind of coming to point of taking back that land. there.l see what happens but you can see the growth of the growth of the way rather that st. elizabeth's ofelf grew over time kind haphazardly caused a lot of issues with the way the there now soe is they're doing all of these infrastructure plans. of course, at the building ineum we're interested what's happening underground and how the water and the electricity are moving through that's kind of what we're looking at here. they are going to build a new andr tower on the site they're building all-new pipes of symptoms, plumbing symptoms, water systems, electrical systems, systemse, all of those are just being ripped out and redone. you can see how corroded the old

pipe was. that's certainly been a hazard roadblock, what i'm looking for, in terms of how the city has moved along with becauselopment plans the infrastructure needed so much work. but now that seems to be happening so hopefully, we'll in a coupleelopment of years. i would like to point out these pictures. a the building museum we have program called investigating where we live where teenagers from washington, d.c. take their out to and go different neighborhood every summer and learn about their own summer many of the teenagers walked around congress heights, the neighborhood around st. elizabeth's and then walked around st. elizabeth and is took these pictures for us to use in the exhibition. that we'verst time used some of those student photographs. an interesting way for the teenagers who live in d.c. to really understand the role of st. elizabeth's in their own city. it's been walled off for so long

and certainly people have jumped the fence and gone inside, but in terms of really being part of urban fabric the of the city, it hasn't been until now. we think that's why we're really that cusp of a change that's happening now. see behind me over here some of these renderings, new idea that there's things happening in st. elizabeth's east and some new excitement. this is a rendering of the entertainment venue that will be renderings and some of what maybe the apartments will look like as they're patientming what were housing for d.c. residents. so you can really see the story going.elizabeth's keeps we don't know what will happen next, but that's how we wanted to end the story is looking the future and really seeing how the city will use uses.pace for new i think that it's important for

understand those two threads of history that i talked about. one is how we should, how we have and how we should care for ill and really think about what the role of the government should be in building infrastructure for the mentally ill, whether how we think about it in community mental health centers or whatever we call them next, what does that look like architecturally, what does that landscape andur how are we going to care for these people? this idea that there was the wayg all wrong with that dicks and others thought about custodial healthcare, maybe that's true, maybe that wrong, okay well, then what comes next? and i think it's important we and having that understanding of what happens before in history can help us think about what will happen next. also, i think for d.c. think it'si interesting, especially for d.c. residents but certainly for all of our visitors as well to come in and learn about land use and

those decisions. walled land that's been off from the rest of the city for a season and a half and who about whatecisions happens there next and one thing i'm interested in is having community participation in all live,ons, wherever you whatever's happening in your neighborhood, there's something -- they're building something, the developers are coming, they're building something, tearing something down, and it's important to understand and be part of that anversation so i think exhibition like this can help people think about maybe what's happening in their own communities and certainly for heights, of congress it's happening right there in their neighborhood, that's pretty important for them to know that history, what happened before so they can understand what should happen to the land now. most of these hospitals have the mid-19thince century and the ones that are still there, more than 30 of dom that are still there have that history, most of them also had a big campus with a

farm. federal't have that military connection that st. elizabeth's does, but they certainly have a connection to people in their state and certainly almost every day when i bring people to the show a connection to a relative or somebody they know who either worked or lived at one of these hospitals. i think it's a really significant part of our national think most of these hospitals, if you dig a little, will have so many compelling stories, yeah. >> this week on c-span. eastern, 8:00 p.m. nasa's coverage of the first total solar eclipse visible in 100the united states years. >> the eclipse is important because these bodies come into alignment in a cosmic moment of. we're all being part >> tuesday at 10:00 p.m., live coverage of president trump's rally in phoenix. wednesday at 8:00 p.m., former presidents george w. bush and

leadership. on >> i always thought i would have a better life if i could have somebody else have a better liked it. and i and i got lucky, i don't care what anybody says, all these people that tell you they were born in a log cabin they built full of bull. >> thursday at 8:00 p.m. with the budget as something for congress to handle we'll look at proposals for the federal budget. and friday, a profile interview with agriculture secretary sonny purdue. >> my political history was i tell people when i was born in 1946 in perry, georgia, they on your birthat certificate. i made a political decision, i inl it truth in advertising, 1998 to change parties and became a republican at that in time. >> followed at 8:30 p.m. by a andersation with black hat death con founder jeff moss. >> there were no jobs in information security for any of us. only people who were doing security were maybe people in the military or banks so this is

a hobby. watch on c-span and c-span.org.atch on c-span and listen on the free c-span radio app. 50this year marks the anniversary of what some call the 1967 new york new jersey rebellion. next a panel of activist accounttheir first-hand of those events, and the change if prompted for new jersey's largest city. this hour-long discussion was hosted by the mist slowly and african-american -- smithsonian's african-american history museum. >> our first discussion entitled , a rebellion explored will be moderated by michael fletcher who is the senior writer for espn, the undefeated. after 21 years at the washington post covering the white