Grosvenor Hospital (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this roadside historical marker:

Grosvenor Hospital
Alexandria Heritage Trail
— City of Alexandria, est. 1749 —

Over the course of the Civil War (1861-1865), the Union Army Surgeon General of Alexandria opened over 30 military hospitals with 6,500 beds within the city limits. Grosvenor Hospital was added as a branch of Mansion House on August 17, 1862, and on September 20, became a general hospital under the newly reorganized 3rd Division General Hospital of Alexandria. During his tenure, Surgeon Edwin Bentley applied to take over the rebel house across the street (now the Lee-Fendell Museum), where he performed one of the earliest drug transfusions in the U.S. in 1864. Grosvenor Hospital closed within weeks of the war's end on April 24, 1865.

The U.S. Army Quartermaster General meticulously mapped temporary structures as well as civil buildings, churches, and large private houses commandeered for the war effort. The Grosvenor Hospital campus included the converted house, where the wounded were received and treated, and a 20'-by-10', two-story ward constructed behind the house. The north side yard contained a 12'-by-14' laundress quarter. A freshwater pump was in the south side yard. South of the ward, a 20'×30' smoke room served as a much-needed escape for those working in the hospital. West of the ward on Columbus Street, there was a 13'-by-16' dead house and a 10'-by-18' sink, otherwise known as a privy or outhouse. The various outbuildings only stood during the war.

[Captions:]
Photographed in the 1860s, the ca. 1840 Greek Revival house at 414 North Washington had 20 rooms, and with the temporary ward, visible in the backyard, 160 beds.

The Dead House was situated on the rear of the lot on Columbus Street. Bodies were received from the back door of the ward and prepared for local burial or transport if a family could afford it.

A standard issue design, the wood-frame ward was front gable with doors facing the back of the house and Columbus Street. The long open rooms accommodated four rows of beds with two aisles.

… through hardship and exposure I again took a violent cold which seemed to settle on my lungs and in fact over my whole body. I was sent to the Grosvenor Hospital in Alexandria.
— George Washington Bellows, Third Michigan Infantry, admitted for "intermittent fever" for three weeks and treated with cathartics and quinine sulfate, February 1864

Erected by City of Alexandria, Virginia.