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Walter Reed Army Medical Center

U.S. Army flagship medical center in Washington D.C. (1909–2011)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ1473658
Source-derived summary

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), officially known as Walter Reed General Hospital (WRGH) until 1951, was the U.S. Army's flagship medical center from 1909 to 2011. Located on 113 acres (46 ha) in Washington, D.C., it served more than 150,000 active and retired personnel from all branches of the United States Armed Forces. The center was named after Walter Reed, a U.S. Army physician and Major who led the team that confirmed that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes rather than direct physical contact.

Since its origins, medical care at the facility grew from a bed capacity of 80 patients to approximately 5,500 rooms covering more than 28 acres (11 ha) of floor space. WRAMC combined with the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland, in 2011 to form the tri-service Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC). The grounds and historic buildings of the old campus are being redeveloped as The Parks at Walter Reed.

History

Origins at Fort McNair

Fort Lesley J. McNair, located in the southwest of the District of Columbia on land set aside by George Washington as a military reservation, is the third oldest U.S. Army installation in continuous use in the United States after West Point and Carlisle Barracks. Its position at the confluence of the Anacostia River and the Potomac River made it an excellent site for the defense of the nation's capital. Dating back to 1791, the post served as an arsenal, played an important role in the nation's defense, and housed the first U.S. Federal Penitentiary from 1839 to 1862.

Today, Fort McNair is the intellectual headquarters for defense.

Editorial summary

“Walter Reed Army Medical Center” enters the record as u.S. Army flagship medical center in Washington D.C. (1909–2011). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Walter, Reed and Army can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1951, 1909, 2011, 1791—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1909. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Walter, Reed and Army.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Walter Reed Army Medical Center” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Walter, Reed and Army provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1473658. VIAF identifies the subject as 158306727. The Library of Congress control number is n82227219. Authority coordinates are 38.975, -77.030. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1909, 2011 and 1791.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Walter Reed Army Medical Center”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Walter Reed Army Medical Center primary sources, Walter Reed Army Medical Center archive and Walter research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Walter Reed Army Medical Center” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.