A photographic history highlighting 100 years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Contains images of the changing campus from its original plans through the construction of two hospitals and support, museum, and research buildings; clinical, research, and rehabilitative activities; and patients, staff, and visitors through the years.

INTRODUCTION
The history of Walter Reed Army Medical Center begins in 1900, when Major Walter Reed led the US Army Yellow Fever Board in Havana, Cuba, in proving that yellow fever was transmitted by the common domestic mosquito.

The results of this research were quickly applied by Major William C Gorgas, essentially ending yellow fever’s centuries-long reign of terror. Within a short time of returning to the states, however, Major Reed died of appendicitis under the care of Major William C Borden, commander of the Army General Hospital in Washington, DC.

Devastated by Reed’s death, Borden dedicated himself to honoring his friend. He worked for several years to get funds for a new hospital to replace the inadequate Army General Hospital, and to have this new hospital named for Walter Reed. In memorializing his friend, Borden honored Walter Reed in ways he could not have imagined.

Opened in May 1909 with 10 patients transferred from the Army General Hospital, Walter Reed General Hospital, the Army’s first named permanent general hospital, was built for a capacity of about 80 patients. Within the hospital’s first decade, World War I brought rapid growth as wounded soldiers poured in from the trenches of Europe, and the patient census swelled into the thousands.

Temporary buildings were constructed to accommodate the new patients -- it was not until almost a decade after the war that significant permanent construction took place, when large wings were added to the east and west ends of the original building. Walter Reed hosted one venue of the Army School of Nursing, established in 1918 to meet the war needs. The school’s first graduating class in 1921 of over 400 is reputed to be the largest graduating class of nursing students in US history.

When additional space was needed to handle World War II casualties, the Forest Glen Annex was purchased and converted into a patient care and convalescent area. Following the war, the introduction of physician residency training programs at Walter Reed mirrored the civilian physician education system to provide specialty training for military physicians.

In September 1951, to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Walter Reed, the name of the installation was changed to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. WRAMC became to internationally prominent under Major General Leonard Heaton during the 1950s, when national and world figures came to receive care and to visit the sick and wounded.

Following his command at Walter Reed, General Heaton became Surgeon General of the US Army. In 1967 Surgeon General Heaton procured funds from Congress to start planning for a new hospital facility. Groundbreaking ceremonies were held for a new WRAMC hospital facility in 1972. Five years later, on September 26, 1977, the new facility opened with 5,500 rooms, 28 acres of floor space, 1,280 patient beds, and 16 operating rooms. In 1994 the building was renamed the Heaton Pavilion. With the onset of the Global War on Terror, today’s deployed intensive care units and critical care air transport have made it possible for severely wounded soldiers to arrive at WRAMC within days of being injured.

Throughout its century of providing care, Walter Reed’s patients have included presidents, vice-presidents, cabinet secretaries, senators, members of Congress, federal judges, Army generals and high ranking officers of all grades, Medal-of-Honor winners, former prisoners of war, and foreign heads of state. During the Vietnam War, a WRAMC orthopedic ward (known as “the snake pit”) became the temporary home of many wounded soldiers, some of whom later became leaders in the Army (Generals Norman Schwartzkoff and Barry McCaffrey) and government (Senator Max Cleland). President Warren G Harding was the first sitting president to visit wounded warriors at Walter Reed. He began a tradition of paying respect and providing comfort to the wounded soldiers and their families continued today by former President George W Bush and President Barack Obama.

This book is not a definitive history of WRAMC; that book is yet to be written. Instead it is a pictorial narrative of this foundation of military medicine as it served the nation and thousands of patients during a century of extraordinary growth in medical knowledge, education, and research.

John R. Pierce, MD
COL, MC, US Army (Ret)
Historian
Walter Reed Society

Visit Walter Reed Army Medical Center Centennial: A Pictorial History, 1909-2009 Download Page

You can download Walter Reed Army Medical Center Centennial: A Pictorial History, 1909-2009 in PDF format.

Edited by John R. Pierce, et al. Foreword by Carla Hawley Bowland. Preface by Norvell Vandervall Coots. Introduction by John R. Pierce. Provides A profusely illustrated history covering the full range of Walter Reed Army Medical Center's activities in service to the Army and the Nation. Some photographs are in color.

PREFACE
As I reflect upon the history of this great health care organization I can not help but wonder what Major (later Lt Colonel) William Borden, who first envisioned a hospital complex named for Walter Reed, and Colonel (later Brigadier General) William Arthur, the first commander, would think today when looking across the 113 acres of buildings, across the top of Building 1, the original Walter Reed General Hospital, to that great grey edifice that is Building 2, the Heaton Pavilion, and the home of the current hospital.

I wonder what they, and other former commanders, many now members of that ghostly assemblage, would think of the changes that have occurred throughout the years and across the wars, the advances in the practice of medicine, the thousands of research protocols conducted, the addition of family member care, and of the creation of residency training programs and fellowships, and not all just for physicians, but for nurses, administrators, technicians, and chaplains as well. I think that he, and the others, would say simply, “Well done; after all, we are Walter Reed!”

When completed in December 1908, the hospital was state of the art for the time, and, in essence, defined “world class” for military facilities. This is the true legacy of Walter Reed, the organization, for we are still, to this day, helping to define what it means to be world class. ...

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