United States Naval Asylum
The Marquis de Lafayette’s farewell visit to America in 1824-1825 stirred fond recollections of the heroes of the War for Independence, and while the young American Navy was still struggling to get Congress to provide the resources it needed to build and equip its ships, in 1826 a site was acquired and an architect selected to build an “asylum” for old sailors. It would also serve as a hospital
The chosen site was James Pemberton’s "The Plantation," 23 acres and a villa in Passyunk, south of the city on the east bank of the Schuylkill. The Navy promptly filled the house with patients from the hospital at the Philadelphia naval shipyard. The selected architect was William Strickland (1788-1854), whose highly regarded Second Bank (1818-1824) had established his Greek Revival credentials.
At the cornerstone ceremony on April 3, 1827, Commodore William Bainbridge predicted that the building would be “a comfortable harbor” for “old tars.” Construction proceeded slowly, and enormous cost overruns caused Strickland to resign in 1829, leaving others in charge. But he returned in 1844 to design and superintend the construction of two houses, for the governor and the medical officer.
The first sailors transferred from the Pemberton house on February 3, 1833. To accommodate them, Strickland had designed a huge, fireproof building of granite, marble, brick, and iron. 385 feet in length, it has 180 brick-floored and vaulted rooms with a capacity of 400 men. The center is marked by a broad, eight-column portico in the Greek Ionic order, whose details are based on the famous but much small “Temple on the Ilissos” in Athens. Already vanished in Strickland’s time, it is known only from drawings made in the 1750s by the architects James Stuart and Nicholas Revett. Behind the portico is a chapel covered by a dome that is 45 feet in diameter.
The wings on either side of the porticoed central block are equipped, front and back, with three-story cast iron verandas, affording plentiful light and fresh air and demonstrating that Strickland was equally proficienct with new technology and historical models. Notably, although unroofed by an arson fire in 2005, most of the building remained stable.
While serving as a hospital and retirement home, the Navy’s first formal training school was also established here in 1839, when Secretary of the Navy James K, Paulding ordered student officers to report to the Naval Asylum for lessons. School functions were accommodated in the north wing, in company with the retirees, while the south wing was the hospital. In 1845 the Naval Academy moved to its permanent location in Annapolis.
The need for hospital space during the Civil War prompted the construction of a second large building, Laning Hall, which opened in 1868. The asylum was formally renamed the U.S. Naval home in 1889, but in the twentieth century its functions were gradually moved elsewhere. Declared surplus property in 1976, it suffered vandalism during a long transition to private ownership. The main building, Biddle Hall, has been restored and converted to apartments, and most of the once parklike site is now filled with a dense rowhouse development called Naval Square, the first parts of which opened in 2005.
Credit: https://www.nps.gov/places/united-states-naval-asylum.htm