Disclaiming any intent to recite the progress of the Institute through its "four-score and nine years" of life, General Armstrong contented himself with a brief account of General Hammond and his "far reaching, and, I am sure, at that time considered visionary, recommendations" and invited attention "to the steps which took us from the Museum stage, which, in the minds of the public both lay and professional, tended to emphasize the dead and the dead past" to the newer and broader institute whose "primary concern is the living, and not the dead."
At the conclusion of General Armstrong's address, Colonel Vorder Bruegge handed the ceremonial shovel to General Dart, who explained its symbolism. "It is," he said, "from the traditions of the past in the old Museum,"—the blade was "made from the hinges of cases in the old museum, some of which go back to the days when the Museum was located in Ford's Theater; the mold was made in the Institute; the casting made by the Naval Gun Factory in Washington; the shaft was turned from wood saved from the old cases when they were replaced by newer and sturdier ones; and the handle was made from a microscope in the old Museum."
"Most important of all," he said, "and the symbol of the part that this Institution is going to play in American medicine in the future, is a microscope slide that was prepared by one of the first members of the staff of the Museum, Dr. J. J. Woodward, one of the earliest photomicroscopists in the United States. This slide, now inlayed in the shaft of the shovel, has been preserved since before 1880."
Handing the shovel to General Armstrong, General Dart stressed the fact that he was "merely the agent of many, many individuals, men and women, in the military service and in civilian life, who have worked so hard for so many years to bring this occasion about."
The occasion was climaxed by the turning of a clod by General Armstrong, after which the elaborately symbolic shovel and the first clod were turned over to the Museum for preservation (fig. 92).[1]
The breaking of ground and work of preparing the site for the building—work which involved moving bodily five large frame residences (fig. 93) to another part of the Walter Reed reservation—did not bring an end to the planning of detailed features. Rather, it was discovered that "throughout the design period plans for a building of this type never become static." Particularly was this true of the new home for the Institute, not only in the period of design but also in the period of construction, and even in the finished building,
- ↑ "Annual Report, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. 1951, exhibit 9: Ground Breaking Ceremony.
