Mansion House Hospital (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact location where the hospital once stood. Today, the Carlyle House Historic Park is open to the public, and owned and operated by the Northern Virginia Park Authority. The Bank of Alexandria building on the corner of Cameron Street was also part of the hospital complex. The larger Mansion House hotel buildings were torn down.


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Here follows an excerpt from the City of Alexandria website:

Mansion House Hospital
Mansion House Hospital was the largest of the confiscated buildings used as a military hospital in Alexandria. The old, vacant hotel was torn down in the 1970s to restore the historic Carlyle House as a museum and park.

History of the Mansion House Hospital
121 N. Fairfax Street

Mansion House Hotel, operated by James Green, was considered one of the premier establishments on the East Coast (also known as Green’s Hotel). In early November 1861, Green received a letter that stated he had three days to vacate the premises. Opened December 1, 1861, as a General Hospital, Mansion House Hospital was subsequently used as the First Division General Hospital, beginning Sept. 20, 1862. It was the largest of the confiscated buildings used as a military hospital in Alexandria, with 500 beds.

Built directly in front of (and obscuring the view of) the 18th century John Carlyle House, Mansion House Hotel (sometimes known as the Braddock House hotel) was vacant and deteriorating when a large portion of it was torn down in the 1970s to restore the house and establish Carlyle House Historic Park. The historic Bank of Alexandria on the corner of Cameron Street, once a part of the hotel and hospital, was also preserved.

First Person Accounts
The occupation of Alexandria by Union troops forever changed the social, cultural and economic fabric of the old seaport town. For four years, Alexandria was an occupied city, enduring the longest military occupation by Union troops of any town during the conflict. We are fortunate to have a number of first-person accounts of this trying period of Alexandria’s history.

Mansion House Hospital
Mary Phinney von Olnhausen, Nurse
Mary Phinney von Olnhausen arrived in Alexandria in August 1862, just after the Battle of Cedar Mountain and was assigned to the Mansion House General Hospital, the city's largest military hospital. She wrote with frustration of the treatment the wounded received when the Mansion House was filled beyond capacity after the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862.

Von Olnhausen, Mary P. Adventures of an Army Nurse in Two Wars, Boston, 1904. Online courtesy University of California Library.
After the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, she wrote:

The whole street (Fairfax Street) was full of ambulances and the sick lay outside on the sidewalks from nine in the morning till five in the evening. Of course places were found for some; but already the house was full; so most had to be packed back again and taken off to Fairfax Seminary, two miles out. I have been so indignant all day. - not a thing done for them, not a wound dressed...They reached town last evening, lay in the cars all night without blankets or food, were chucked into ambulances, lay about here all dy, and to-night were put back into ambulances and carted off again. I think every man who comes a soldiering is a fool!

Surgeon in charge Dr. Summers did not support female nurses and was known to make life miserable for them, but Dorothea Dix placed them there anyway. Von Olnhausen wrote:

The surgeon told me he had no room for me, and a nurse told me he said he would make the house so hot for me, I would not stay long. When I told Miss Dix I could not remain without a room to sleep in, she, knowing the plan of driving me out, said "My child (I was nearly as old as herself), you will stay where I have placed you."

In May 1863, rumors ran rampant of a possible Confederate attack on the northern Virginia area, especially Alexandria.

For the last week all sorts of rumors have been afloat of the invasion of Alexandria: preparations have been making all around, rifle pits dug everywhere...even the bridge made ready to be destroyed at a moment's notice, and no one permitted to go out of town....Rifle pits are dug across all streats [sic] leading to the commissary departments, for here lie all the stores for the whole Army of the Potomac. Just at the corner of our hospital and just under my window one is dug, and a battery of four guns planned...and since I began to write up comes the orderly, counts every man in the hospital able to shoulder a gun, and arms them all, so that at a moment's warning they may be ready.

Judson, Soldier/Patient
From a letter from a patient/soldier named Judson, at Mansion House, to Sarah Stillman, Rochester, NY, Aug. 23, 1862:

My health at present is quite good with the exception of now and then a day. I am not [now?] taking care of the wounded, dressing and treating their wounds and doing such things as need to be done.

J.B. Porter, Surgeon
Surgeon J.B. Porter felt he was falsely accused by patients at the hospital. He requested a hearing before a Court of Inquiry, as reported in the New York Times on March 22, 1862.

“The Mansion Hospital at Alexandria; Vindication of Dr. J.B. Porter.” The New York Times, March 22, 1862.

General Orders No. 85 – ….The Court find that certain inmates of Mansion House Hospital at Alexandria, Va., furnished by Col. J.H. Mansfield, agent of the State of Wisconsin, and Aide-de-Camp to the Governor of said State, certain letters alleging certain matters against Surgeon J.B. PORTER, USA….The Court took these letters as the basis of their inquiry and, on the evidence, under oath of the complainants themselves, the evidence has failed to substantiate the statements set forth in these letters, except in a few instances outside of the control of the hospital department common to the Army on the Virginia side of the Potomac: for a short period in the month of December, 1861, the flour furnished to the Alexandria bakery was of inferior quality.

No witness has testified to Dr. PORTER’s striking patients, or otherwise punishing them….The Court finds that the conduct of Dr. John B. PORTER towards the patients has been distinguished by kindness and consideration for the wants of the sick….

Fragment of letter from a patient
Found during restoration of the Carlyle House

Mansion House Hospital
Alexandria, Va May 1864

Dear Suse,
I have [illegible] yours. No letters of any kind. I don't know when I will
leave here. My time is out on the 28 of September. We expect to be [illegible]
here some more [illegible] I Get it [illegible] No more is possible

Gabe
Official card for patient S.D. Newcomb
Found during restoration of the Carlyle House. A small piece of cardstock which may be either a hospital admission ticket or a bed label. The piece is in poor condition, with most of the writing faded.

Bed Number: 133
Name: S D Newcomb
Company: 1st Bat, 93 [illegible]
Regiment: 93 [illegible]
Disease or Injury: [illegible] used wound right ankle
Date of Admission: May 28th, 1864
Date of Discharge:
Where Sent and by what Authority:

Location and the Site Today
Mansion House Hospital was located at 121 Fairfax Street. Today, the Carlyle House Historic Park is open to the public, and owned and operated by the Northern Virginia Park Authority. The Bank of Alexandria building on the corner of Cameron Street was also part of the hospital complex. The larger Mansion House hotel buildings were torn down.


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Here follows an excerpt from the "Carlyle House Docent Dispatch" published by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority on March 3, 2011:

Nurses, Spies and Soldiers: The Civil War at Carlyle House
By Sarah Coster

The Mansion House Hospital, which incorporated the 1753 home of John Carlyle and the large building in front of it, was a place of strife and suffering during the Civil War. Alexandra, the longest occupied Confederate city of the war, epitomized what it meant to pit brother against brother. It is a legacy of divisiveness that is still apparent today as we struggle to grapple with what the Civil War meant then and now. Inside the Union controlled hospital, one found struggles as well. Female nurses were verbally abused and criticized. Soldiers struggled against disease and illness, often serving only to find their pension claims denied. Everyone at the hospital missed home and peacetime.

But Carlyle House and the Mansion House Hospital, were also places of hope and triumph. Female nurses here made great strides in earning recognition and respect, paving a way for future female medical practitioners. Soldiers made miraculous recoveries as medicine advanced.

These stories and more have recently been discovered as staff worked to research the Civil War story of our site. Throughout 2011 and beyond, to commemorate the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, exhibits and programs will highlight the fascinating lives of those living here 150 years ago.

James Green, a successful furniture maker, was living at Carlyle House with his father, mother, wife and child at the beginning of 1861. His father, also James Green, ran a large and successful hotel located where the front lawn of Carlyle House is today. It was known as the Mansion House Hotel.

Green purchased a diary in January to record a year that he believed in “all probability will see the end of this Union of States.” On May 24, 1861, Green awoke to guns firing as Union boats landed in Alexandria’s harbor. “The Confederate troops had barely time to leave town,” he noted.

They were quickly replaced by Union troops, many of whom boarded at the Mansion House Hotel. “Not much sleep,” Green complained, “with our new boarders overhead dancing…” The dancing stopped a few months later when the building became a hospital.

Shots rang out early in the morning of July 21, 1861, in nearby Manassas, Virginia. By the end of the day, over 2,000 soldiers had been wounded in the first major battle of the war, the First Battle of Bull Run. The Union Army scrambled to find space for the wounded.

James Green, the owner of the Mansion House Hotel, received a letter from the government in early November stating he had three days to vacate the premises. Even with the help of his furniture factory workers it took them over a week to remove everything.

As the war progressed, Alexandria’s hospitals quickly filled to capacity, including the 700-bed Mansion House Hospital. Mary Phinney, a nurse, described the over-crowding following the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. Fairfax Street, she wrote, “was full of ambulances and the sick lay outside on the sidewalks from nine in the morning till five in the evening . . . and to-night were put back into ambulances and carted off again.” Even in a city full of hospitals, these sick and dying soldiers had nowhere to go.

During the four years of war, Union hospitals treated 6,000,000 cases of illness and 400,000 battle wounds and injuries. Two-thirds of Union deaths during the Civil War were a result of disease. Poor sanitation, hygiene and diet caused high amounts of dysentery, typhoid and other illnesses. Infections after surgery were common and often resulted in amputation. Doctors had no knowledge of germ theory or antiseptic practices, and many soldiers lost their lives to infection.

Despite their shortcomings, the doctors and nurses at the Mansion House Hospital made great strides in saving lives. Perhaps some of the greatest strides, however, were those made by the female nurses stationed here. At the time of the Civil War, the idea of a female nurse in a military hospital was a new and unpopular concept, piloted by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War in Europe. The female nurses at Mansion House Hospital overcame prejudice and harsh treatment in order to bring comfort and aide to wounded and dying men. One surgeon in Alexandria told Nurse Harriet Dada that “A lady ceases to be a lady when she becomes a nurse.” However, through their dedication and hard work, the female nurses won over many the surgeons and doctors and opened the door for future American women to have medical careers.

One female nurse that worked at the Mansion House Hospital defied gender roles in a particularly stunning manner. This soldier was a female disguised as a man. Sarah Emma Edmonds was already passing herself off as a man named Frank

Thompson when the war began, working as a door-to-door salesman. When the Civil War called on men to enlist, Edmonds found the opportunity enticing. She joined the Union army, fought at Blackburn’s Ford and served as a nurse at the Mansion House Hospital. She also worked as a mail carrier and even, she claimed, spied for the Union.

It is believed some 300-500 women may have served as soldiers during the Civil War, though an exact number may never be known. Most of Edmonds’ campmates assumed she was one of the young boys who snuck into the army, except for one. Edmonds’ close friend and fellow soldier, Jerome Robbins, was suspicious. He wrote in his journal “a mystery appears to be connected with [Frank] which it is impossible for me to fathom.” When Edmonds did reveal her identity to him Robbins kept it a secret, telling only his diary. It is in this diary, now in the archives of the University of Michigan, that Robbins recorded Sarah Emma Edmonds working as a nurse at the Mansion House Hospital during the winter of 1861-1862.

After two months as a nurse, Edmonds moved on to become a mail carrier, which certainly gave her more freedom to come and go, and thus easier to hider her identity. In 1863, Edmonds contracted malaria and deserted, rather than risk discovery. She went on to write her memoirs and was even granted a pension, one of the few women soldiers to receive one.

In Edmonds’ memoirs, which she published immediately after the war, she claimed to have been a spy for Allan Pinkerton and the Union Intelligence Service. While little evidence exists to support her claims, it was not uncommon for spies on both side of the war to use disguise to cross enemy lines. One of these spies was in love with Carlyle House’s own Emma Green.

Known as “Lee’s beloved and trusted scout,” Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow attended Episcopal High School, near Alexandria. While there he met Emma Green, the daughter of Mansion House Hotel owner James Green. Frank and Emma fell in love, but their courtship was interrupted by the Civil War.

A skinny 21 year-old at the start of the war, Stringfellow used his cunning and bravery to gather intelligence for the Confederacy. He daringly crossed enemy lines multiple times, sneaking into both Alexandria and Washington.

Stringfellow’s adventures are the stuff of legends. Once, while spying in DC, he refused to drink to President Lincoln’s health, and instead toasted Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He also claimed to have hidden under an Alexandria woman’s petticoats to escape Union troops.

After the war, Stringfellow married Emma, but not before refusing to take the oath of loyalty to the Union and living in Canada. Frank and Emma are buried side-by-side in the Ivy Hill cemetery in Alexandria.

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army to General Ulysses S. Grant. He may have signed the terms of his surrender on a desk made at James Green’s Alexandria workshop. Carlyle House and the Mansion House Hospital were returned to the Green family and they soon reopened it as a hotel.

Alexandria and the hotel never returned to their former glory. The city fell into a slow decline and by the 1970s the buildings were crumbling into decay. The Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority stepped in to save Carlyle House from destruction, opening it as a museum on January 1, 1976.

During the restoration, the former Mansion House Hospital buildings was torn down, but not before artifacts from its days as a Civil War Hospital were recovered from underneath the floorboards and behind the walls. These artifacts will be featured in our upcoming exhibit, which will open on March 31, 2011.


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Here follows an excerpt from the "Out of the Attic" column published in the Alexandria Times newspaper:

An occupied city and the misfortunes of war
Alexandria Times, February 18, 2016

After four years of war and the Union occupation of Alexandria, news that the war had ended with Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1865 was received by Alexandrians with a mixture of relief and joy, disbelief and sadness. The economic and social costs of the war were huge, and most residents must have known that life in the city was changed forever, meaning a blend of huge challenges and major opportunities.

Alexander Hunter, who left school with so many of his classmates to fight in the 17th Virginia Infantry, recalled Lee’s own words to him immediately following the surrender. “Your first duty,” Lee told him, “is to go home and make your mother’s heart glad, and your next is to Virginia. She needs all her sons more now than ever.” Hunter also wrote that Lee urged his former soldiers to “commence a new life and be good citizens.”

Judith McGuire, whose husband had been Hunter’s principal at Episcopal High School, was more despairing. “I only feel that we have no country, no government, no future,” she wrote. “The Northern officials offer free tickets to persons returning to their homes — alas! To their homes! How few of us have homes! Some are confiscated; others destroyed.”

Those feelings of gloom that April were added to by the stunning news of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Alexandria Gazette editor Edgar Snowden reported that, “the rumor was at first discredited. No one believed that such an awful tragedy did or could happen... As the particulars became known, men gathered in groups — heard with wonder and amazement — and expressed their indignation. Nothing else was thought of or talked of.” Occupation had been a mixed blessing for Alexandria; the city avoided destruction from actual fighting, but its economy and commercial infrastructure suffered nevertheless. It has been estimated that as many as a third of residents left town before and during the war, some never to return.

Many of the homes, businesses and other private property, such as James Green’s Mansion House Hotel seen here, of known or suspected “secessionists” had been seized by the army, often on the questionable basis of unpaid taxes by their absentee owners, and were then sold after the war.

Countering this population loss was the now permanent settlement in the city of many Contrabands: former slaves who had streamed into Alexandria by the thousands soon after the war began and now made up approximately half of the city’s population as free citizens. Joining the pre-war communities of The Bottoms, Hayti, and Fishtown were new African American neighborhoods called Petersburg (later simply “The Berg”), Uptown, The Hill, The Hump and Cross Canal.

Many businesses remained shuttered, including some of Alexandria’s largest enterprises such as the Mount Vernon cotton mill, the Pioneer Mill and the Smith & Perkins foundry right next door. Port and rail facilities and equipment had been used hard by the Army, and the Alexandria Canal needed extensive repairs.

Alexandria had become the seat of the Restored Government of Virginia in late 1863, made up of those portions of the state under Union control. Gov. Francis Pierpont and the 13 members of the General Assembly met in the city’s council chambers, working on a new state constitution that abolished slavery and denied the vote to former Confederates until they swore allegiance to the federal government.

Under President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction plan following Lincoln’s death, Virginians were able to repeal the loyalty oath provision in the state constitution, allowing Alexandrians to return many former Confederates to city government in the elections of 1866 and 1867.

“Out of the Attic” is published each week in the Alexandria Times newspaper. The column began in September 2007 as “Marking Time” and explored Alexandria’s history through collection items, historical images and architectural representations. Within the first year, it evolved into “Out of the Attic” and featured historical photographs of Alexandria.

These articles appear with the permission of the Alexandria Times and were authored by Amy Bertsch, former Public Information Officer, and Lance Mallamo, Director, on behalf of the Office of Historic Alexandria.


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Here follows an excerpt from the "Out of the Attic" column published in the Alexandria Times newspaper:

How a bank building became a hotel and Civil War hospital
Alexandria Times, September 12, 2013

The Bank of Alexandria was founded in 1792 and spent fourteen years in the old Duvall’s Tavern building at 305 Cameron St. In 1807, the bank moved to a new building at the corner of Cameron and North Fairfax streets — at the time the intersection of the Port City’s two primary roadways.

A year after construction, Capt. Henry Massie apparently referred to the stateliness of the new structure in a description of Alexandria’s appearance: “The buildings are chiefly of brick, some of them very stately and elegant. The banks are kept in houses quite magnificent.”

Unfortunately, the bank failed during the Panic of 1834, and soon after, Robert Mills considered converting the building into a federal courthouse for Alexandria, when the city was still within the District of Columbia. However, this idea was ultimately rejected, and a new, larger building was constructed several blocks from City Hall, at Queen and North Columbus streets, for that purpose.

The bank building sat empty for some time until James Green purchased it in 1848, a year after Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia. Agreeing with other residents that the city would prosper economically after the retrocession, Green incorporated the structure within a much larger hostelry he built southward along North Fairfax Street, called Green’s Mansion House Hotel. This new hostelry was constructed directly in front of the early home of John Carlyle, which remained hidden and neglected for more than 120 years.

During the Civil War, the mansion house was converted into a hospital for wounded Union soldiers, who were often cared for on the sidewalks surrounding the building until room could be found inside. This photograph shows the mansion house during the war, with the original bank building to the left, adjacent to the Cameron Street stockade. After the war, the structure was converted back into a hotel.

Acquired by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority in the 1970s, the 1848 addition was demolished as part of the Carlyle House restoration, and the 1807 bank building was restored to its original appearance. The bank building is believed to be the second oldest bank building built specifically for that purpose that survives in the United States.

“Out of the Attic” is published each week in the Alexandria Times newspaper. The column began in September 2007 as “Marking Time” and explored Alexandria’s history through collection items, historical images and architectural representations. Within the first year, it evolved into “Out of the Attic” and featured historical photographs of Alexandria.

These articles appear with the permission of the Alexandria Times and were authored by Amy Bertsch, former Public Information Officer, and Lance Mallamo, Director, on behalf of the Office of Historic Alexandria.


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Here follows an excerpt from the "Out of the Attic" column published in the Alexandria Times newspaper:

An obstruction for some, a gem for others
Alexandria Times, November 23, 2010

Dating to the mid-19th century, this large structure on North Fairfax Street has been known as Green’s Mansion House, Mansion House Hospital and Braddock House. By 1848, furniture manufacturer James Green acquired the former Bank of Alexandria building on the corner of Cameron Street and converted it to a hotel. A four-story addition to the east built around 1855 not only made Green’s Mansion House the largest hotel in Alexandria, but it completely blocked the historic Carlyle House from view on North Fairfax Street.

During the Civil War, the Union army converted the hotel into a hospital. Able to hold up to 700 sick and wounded soldiers, the Mansion House Hospital was the largest military hospital in Alexandria. After the war, the hotel reopened as the Mansion House Hotel. In the early 1880s, with new proprietors, the hotel acquired a new name – Braddock House. In 1886, it was advertised as the “only first-class hotel” in Alexandria and boasted “modern improvements,” including a telephone, billiard room, bowling alleys, “hot and cold baths” and “a first-class bar.”

The property changed hands several times, and part of it was turned into apartments in the early 1900s. Still, the Braddock House building, seen in this photo taken around 1919, had signs posted that read, “This house surrounds the old Carlyle House. Entrance through this building.”

The Braddock House building deteriorated and in the early 1970s, after the Northern Virginia Park Authority acquired the entire property, the Alexandria City Council approved plans to demolish the old hotel while leaving the former bank building and original mansion in place. Despite protests from some preservationists who considered the hotel building to be historically significant, it was demolished in early 1973, opening up an unobstructed view of Carlyle House.

“Out of the Attic” is published each week in the Alexandria Times newspaper. The column began in September 2007 as “Marking Time” and explored Alexandria’s history through collection items, historical images and architectural representations. Within the first year, it evolved into “Out of the Attic” and featured historical photographs of Alexandria.

These articles appear with the permission of the Alexandria Times and were authored by Amy Bertsch, former Public Information Officer, and Lance Mallamo, Director, on behalf of the Office of Historic Alexandria.