Portsmouth Naval Hospital

Portsmouth Naval Hospital, the U.S. Navy’s first hospital, was founded in 1827 by Secretary of the Navy Samuel L. Southard and opened in 1830. Architect John Haviland designed Building No. One in an impressive Greek Revival style featuring an embellished Doric portico with 10 columns. The hospital was built on the site of Fort Nelson from the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 era, a fortification rendered obsolete by the construction of Fortress Monroe across Hampton Roads on Old Point Comfort, and materials salvaged from Fort Nelson’s demolition were used to build the hospital. During the Civil War, the hospital served both the Union and the Confederacy: after Virginia left the Union, the Confederacy used it until Southern forces abandoned Portsmouth on May 10, 1862, after which the Union maintained the hospital for the rest of the war in support of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. In the hospital grave yard stands a memorial to the 337 dead of USS Cumberland and USS Congress, killed when those vessels were sunk on March 8, 1862, by CSS Virginia, and fifty-eight Confederates are also buried there.

Portsmouth, Virginia · United States