Red Cross Headquarters Building a monument to women in the Civil War

kholland

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The headquarters building of the American Red Cross, located at 430 17th Street, NW, in Washington, D.C., is an impressive classical structure. Now designated a National Historic Landmark, it was designed by architects Breck Trowbridge and Goodhue Livingston. The interior contains a number of notable features, including sculptural artwork and three large Tiffany stained glass windows in what is now the Board of Governors Hall. Though this building is well known, it is less known that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was in charge of its construction and that the building was conceived as a memorial to the women of the Civil War.


americannationalredcross01.jpg

In addition to maintaining homes and households while husbands, sons, and brothers were serving in the military, a significant number of women “on both sides” served as volunteer nurses during the Civil War. Some died performing this service. Former Union General Francis C. Barlow is credited with the idea of building a monument to these women after his wife, Arabelle Wharton Barlow, died of fever contracted while working as a nurse at a Union hospital in Washington, D.C., July 1864. Following General Barlow’s death, a close friend, Capt. James A. Scrymser, worked to ensure this memorial was built in the form of a new headquarters building for the American Red Cross. The memorial would be an appropriate gesture for an organization founded in 1881 by a woman, Clara Barton, and dedicated to the relief of those affected by war.

http://www.usace.army.mil/About/His...s/Parks-and-Monuments/095-Women-of-Civil-War/
 
I wish there was some way this could become generally known, as you pass by the building, pehaps. Civil War women and those who became nurses deserve it.
 
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