Tag: Old Arsenal Prison (Washington DC)

Wikipedia says: The military reservation was established in 1791, on about 28 acres at the tip of Greenleaf Point. Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant included it in his plans for Washington, the Federal City, as a significant site for the capital defense. On L’Enfant’s orders, Andre Villard, a French follower of Marquis de Lafayette, placed a one-gun battery on the site. In 1795, the site became one of the first two United States arsenals.

An arsenal first occupied the site, and defenses were built in 1794. However, the fortifications did not halt the invasion of British forces in 1814, who burned down many public government buildings in Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812. Soldiers at the arsenal evacuated north with as much gunpowder as they could carry, hiding the rest in a well as the British soldiers came up the Potomac River after burning the Capitol. About 47 British soldiers found the powder magazines they had come to destroy empty. Someone threw a match into the well, and “a tremendous explosion ensued,” a doctor at the scene reported, “whereby the officers and about 30 of the men were killed and the rest most shockingly mangled.”

The remaining soldiers destroyed the arsenal buildings, but the facilities were rebuilt from 1815 to 1821. Eight buildings were arranged around a quadrangle and named the Washington Arsenal. In the early 1830s, four acres of marshland were reclaimed and added to the arsenal. A seawall and additional buildings were constructed. Between 1825 and 1831, the penitentiary was constructed on the arsenal with a three-story block of cells, administrative buildings, and a shoe factory for teaching prisoners a trade.