Tales of Germ Warfare Still Haunt ‘Anthrax Hotel’

The old laboratory, closed for decades, is widely known in Frederick County, Md., as “the tower of doom” -- a nearly windowless, seven-story structure of dark brick looming over the Army’s Ft. Detrick. It was the cloistered, pressure-sealed edifice in which Cold War scientists brewed microbes for the U.S. military’s biological weapons program.

The program was halted long ago, the government says. Now only the building -- Building 470 -- and its legends remain.

It’s a sort of haunted house, said Al Weinberg, a Hood College professor and Frederick native. “When you were showing somebody around” the county, he said, “you could drive by and say, ‘There’s the Anthrax Hotel -- it’s so dangerous, they sealed it up and nobody’s been in there for years.’ ”

Before the Nixon administration declared an end to the biological weapons program, the lab-coated warrior-researchers of Building 470 spent almost two decades cooking up microscopic payloads meant to fatally sicken America’s enemies. The building has been mostly unoccupied since 1969 and was officially decommissioned in 1971. Ever since, the story has persisted in Frederick that the tower is contaminated.

It has even been said that an infected dead man is sealed within its walls.

Now the National Cancer Institute, which took over Building 470 in 1988, wants to tear it down. And in preparation, officials are working to dispel any fear that the demolition will fill Frederick’s air with deadly germs sealed in the tower for 30-plus years. Thousands of gallons of anthrax slurry -- a paste-like substance containing anthrax spores -- were manufactured in the building. But officials say anthrax is not a concern; what worries them are asbestos and lead paint.

“Since 1971, people have been going into that building,” said George Anderson, a decontamination expert with Southern Research Institute. He and numerous colleagues have concluded that it would be safe to raze the building.

It is impossible to say with certainty that there are no anthrax spores in the building, he said. But after multiple decontaminations over the years, and many tests for the spores, Anderson is confident it is safe for unvaccinated demolition workers.

Ed Regis, author of “Biology of Doom,” a book about the U.S. germ warfare program, said that for many people, the fear inspired by Building 470 has waned, including suspicions that biological-weapons work continued there after Nixon’s 1969 announcement that it would stop.

Visible from well beyond the 1,200-acre Ft. Detrick, Building 470 is the tallest structure on the grounds.

The bottom two floors are dark. This is where, in the 1950s and ‘60s, scientists showered and changed into street clothes after working with germs that could kill people by the thousands. In the evenings, they went home to their families, prohibited to utter anything about the work that occupied their days.

Drab green paint covers the walls, and routine safety warnings are still posted. Yet some parts of the building bring to mind Frankenstein’s laboratory.

There are two cylindrical, 2,500-gallon brewing vats stretching several stories through the structure. A network of pipes feeds into two huge “kill tanks” in the basement, where unused biological agents were flushed and subjected to a treatment that rendered them harmless.

Much of the equipment used decades ago remains, including glass cases where scientists handled deadly germs with thick rubber gloves, and huge fermenters -- resembling those in a brewery -- in which anthrax spores were created.

There are puddles of water throughout the building from leaks in the roof. Mold has grown in large, dark swaths across much of the interior. Paint is peeling from walls.

The building will be slowly dismantled in sections while covered with plastic construction mesh to prevent problems from falling debris.

And then Building 470 will be gone, and perhaps its legends, too. One story holds that because of a massive accident involving deadly biological agents, the government could never be entirely sure that the building was safe to occupy -- and that was why it was closed. And because officials couldn’t be sure the toxins were gone, it had to be left standing.

Nonsense, officials say.

“The building is an anachronism and a throwback,” said Robert Wiltrout, associate director of the cancer institute. Yet given its history, it remains “a lightning rod for all of the things that happened at Ft. Detrick.”