"We Were Here First"
New Exhibit Probes Centuries of History at National Library of Medicine Site

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"We Were Here First"
New Exhibit Probes Centuries of History at National Library of Medicine Site

(Bethesda, MD)--Have you ever wondered what happened on the site of the National Institutes of Health before it was the National Institutes of Health? Now, you can glimpse the rich history of one corner of the campus, the site of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), as captured in maps, artifacts, and stories about inhabitants including native American hunters, tobacco planters, golfers and a descendant of Martha Washington.

NLM's History of Medicine Division (HMD) has mounted a small but intriguing new exhibit, "We Were Here First: The History of the NLM Site, 1000 BC-AD 1955," at the entrance to the HMD Reading Room, off the lobby of the Library (Building 38). The exhibit will be on display until the end of June l998.

"We Were Here First" uses original artifacts and digital reproductions of maps and photographs to illustrate 3,000 years of human activity on the land on which the NLM now stands and its immediate environs.

"This exhibition offers a new perspective on our history by examining the variety of past uses of material space-the land to which we come to work every day," observed Dr. Elizabeth Fee, Chief of the History of Medicine Division. "'We Were Here First' gives us a new sense of some of the people who came before us. It allows us a glimpse of the fascinating waves of activity that have taken place in one small area of Montgomery County, where our buildings stand today."

From approximately 1000 BC to AD 1600, small groups of hunters periodically visited the area, using it as a hunting camp and a stopping place on the route between western Maryland and the Potomac River. Archeological excavations carried out in the area just south of NLM, across the small brook, uncovered evidence of extensive tool-making activity. Some of the objects such as stone projectile (i.e., spear and arrow) points, hammerstones, and daggers, are on display.

The NLM area was part of two land grants, "Clagett's Purchase" and "Huntington," made to Thomas Fletchall in 1715. By 1783, the land was owned by Robert Peter, one of the wealthiest men in Montgomery County. His son, Thomas, married Martha Washington's granddaughter, Martha Parke Custis. Their granddaughter and her husband, Armistead Peter, a physician who was in charge of a smallpox hospital during the Civil War, inherited the Bethesda land and built a summer home called Winona on this site. While descendants of the prominent Peter and Custis families lived in the house on the hill, a local family named Gingle occupied a house near the stream. Maps from 1865, 1879, and 1894 show the locations of the Peter and Gingle homes.

In 1921, the Town and Country Club, a private club founded by members of Washington's German-Jewish community, purchased the property. It was later renamed the Woodmont Country Club. Extensive renovations turned the Georgian brick house into a white columned mansion and the surrounding land into a nine-hole golf course. Posters from this period announce dances on the "Starlight Open Porch" and celebrate the expansion of the golf course.

The Federal Government purchased the land for NIH in 1948 but ran it as the public Glenbrook Golf Course until 1955. Ground was broken for the National Library of Medicine in 1959.

Flyers about the exhibit are available at the NLM. For more information, contact the exhibit's curator, Carol Clausen, by mail at History of Medicine Division, NLM, Bethesda, MD 20894, or e-mail carol-clausen@nlm.nih.gov.

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Last updated: 24 March 1998
First published: 24 March 1998
Permanence level: Permanent: Stable Content