History, The District

A Look at Saint Elizabeths West Campus


‘Saint Elizabeths – Central Building – 05-21-11’
courtesy of ‘mosley.brian’

About two weeks ago, I got the chance to go on a DC Preservation League tour of Saint Elizabeths West Campus. It was the second time I’d been able to go on the tour, the first time being in December of 2008. I was looking forward to seeing how things had changed in two and a half years.

But first, a note on this post: it’s going to be fairly bare bones on information. That’s because there is literally 150+ years of history in this location! Sorting through it all and writing a truly thorough post would be the length of a small book. There is a huge amount of research on the property because of the Department of Homeland Security moving onto the historic West Campus, and a lot of effort is being made to preserve as much as possible. I encourage you to dig deeper by reading the GSA’s website on the redevelopment, along with a short but detailed history of St. Es, and their extremely detailed Historic Landscape Survey. Also, we’ve talked about St. Es before, and it is worth rereading Tiffany’s article. And, of course, there’s Wikipedia.

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Crime & Punishment, Downtown, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!

DHS Warns of Terror Threat to Metro

Photo courtesy of

courtesy of ‘erin m’

NBC4 reports that the DHS warned WMATA on Sunday of a potential terror threat to the Metro system. According to a DHS memo, an  individual obtained a Turkish visa to come to the States and perpetrate a bombing on a Metro station.  The memo stated that this information has “low credibility” and that DHS has little information as to the specific date or target for the attack, or  if the individual in question is even capable of carrying out a bombing.