Washington Home for The Incurables (Washington, D.C.)
Biography
The Home for The Incurables was a place where chronically ill people who could not be cared for at home to go. Mrs. Charles Hill had the idea to create this home in 1888 and opened the Washington Home for The Incurables in Meridian Hill with two patients in a six room house without electricity or running water. Four years later the home was moved to a 50 room brick building on the northwest corner of what is now Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown. An elevator was needed in the four-floor building that was run by hand. By 1895 there were 42 people in the home with diagnoses ranging from consumption and rheumatic heart disease to infantile paralysis (polio) and cancer. In 1898 electric lights were installed and work was begun to enlarge the facility. Since there was so much demand for the services, it was moved in 1923 just north was the Washington Cathedral on Wisconsin Avenue between Tilden and Upton Streets. By 1933 The Home was again over capacity, so the building was expanded. By 1986 the building was razed and replaced with a larger, state of the art facility with direct-access from private rooms to outside landscaped gardens. The Home was acquired by Medstar Health Visiting Nurse Association's hospice program. The Home was also known by the names: The Washington Home, and The Washington Home and Community Hospices.