Three miles from the Capitol, on some of the highest ground in the city, sits the largest development opportunity left in Washington: the 183-acre East Campus of St. Elizabeths. For more than a century and a half, the name meant a hospital. Within a few years, it will mean a neighborhood — and the first for-sale homes are already rising.
Dorothea Dix's Hospital on the Hill
St. Elizabeths opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane — the first psychiatric hospital run by the federal government, and the direct result of a campaign by the reformer Dorothea Dix, who spent years pressing Congress to treat mental illness as something deserving care rather than confinement. Dix helped choose the site herself: a hilltop farm tract with sweeping views of the river and the city, on land whose colonial-era name — the "St. Elizabeth" tract — eventually replaced the institutional mouthful. Congress made the name official in 1916.
At its height the campus was effectively a self-contained town — wards, farms, workshops, and some of the finest institutional architecture in the city, which is why the campus is a National Historic Landmark today.
The Center Building, photographed in 1938 — the Gothic Revival centerpiece Dorothea Dix's campaign built, and still the architectural heart of the campus. Library of Congress.
Two Campuses, Two Futures
Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue splits the grounds in two, and the two halves went two directions. The federal government kept the West Campus and redeveloped it as the Department of Homeland Security headquarters, anchored by the Coast Guard. The District took the East Campus — and set out to build a neighborhood.
The pieces have arrived steadily: the Entertainment and Sports Arena on Oak Drive, the Sycamore & Oak retail village, Whitman-Walker's health center, and the adaptive reuse of the grand old buildings — including the Residences at St. Elizabeths East, which turned a historic structure into 252 apartments. In March 2026 the District issued the request for proposals for Parcel 1, one of the campus's biggest remaining pieces. This is not a master plan on a shelf; it's a neighborhood under construction.
The First Homes You Can Own
For buyers, the milestone is District Towns: 88 new fee-simple townhomes on Sycamore Drive near Alabama Avenue SE, a short walk from the Congress Heights Metro. A share of the homes are reserved for households under set income levels, priced below market with resale covenants; the rest are market-rate. It's the campus's first for-sale housing — and given how the remaining parcels are planned, ownership opportunities here will arrive in phases, not floods.
New construction changes the financing rhythm. You sign a builder's contract months before delivery, which shifts the questions from "what's wrong with the house" (nothing — it's new, and warrantied) to "when do we lock, and what if the delivery date moves." The income-restricted homes add a second layer: income certification, covenant review, and coordination between the developer, the District, and the lender. None of it is hard if your lender has done it before; all of it is miserable if they haven't.
Our St. Elizabeths East financing guide walks through the mechanics — builder timelines, income-restricted purchases, and which DC assistance programs stack on a new townhome. And because the campus sits inside a larger neighborhood with its own deep housing stock, the Congress Heights guide covers the detached houses and rowhouses on the surrounding blocks.
Watching a neighborhood get built and wondering if there's a place in it for you? Get pre-qualified or talk to us first — bring the floor plan, we'll bring the numbers.
