Funky Friday: Walt Whitman and the National Portrait Gallery

Major parts of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, is housed buildings built in the early 1800's. Part of it was a post office, and the part pictured above housed the Patent Office. At the end of this corridor is the delightful three story space with galleries that housed the library of patent models. 

In the early 1860's, the post office and patent office packed away into storage, and the space was converted to a hospital for soldiers and sailors injured in the US Civil War.  There were an estimated 1.5 million people injured or got sick during the War, with about half of those dying. Disease killed as many, or more, than wounds. Tens of thousands of men spent weeks, months or years requiring medical care. 

Walt Whitman, an American poet of the era, volunteered in this hospital.  He spent months at bedside talking with the patients, reading to them, and helping them write letters home. He wrote about it in his journals, many of the patients wrote or spoke of the experience. 

It is clear from the writings, that his affection for some of the patients went beyond that of a kindly old author. One of nature's batchelors made some special friends while helping them recover from the war.

When I walk those halls, I sometimes think of the compassion and passion of the past in that sacred space.