Walter Reed Army Medical Center to close

The BRAC commission voted to close historic hospital and build a new facility at the Naval Medical Center site in Bethesda, Md.

Named for Maj. Walter Reed, an Army surgeon who led the researchers who discovered that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes, the center admitted its first patient in 1909, when it could accommodate fewer than 100 patients. Now, the 113-acre installation has some 5,500 rooms. It has treated presidents and other politicians, Supreme Court justices, several generals, King Hussein of Jordan and the exiled shah of Iran. It has also treated thousands of rank-and-file military people, including some recently wounded in Iraq.

Gen. John J. Pershing died at Walter Reed in 1948. Gen. Douglas MacArthur died there in 1964, and Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1969.

The grounds of Walter Reed are home to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, whose exhibits include the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln and fragments of Lincoln's skull, and the bones of the amputated leg of Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, a Union commander who lost the limb at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

More on the hospital here. And here's a short biography of Walter Reed.