In 1810, an Act of Congress was passed appointing the Secretaries of War, the Navy, and the Treasury, to a "Board of Commissioners of Naval Hospitals." In sequence to the Act of 1810 was the Act of February 26, 1811, authorizing "the Commissioners of Navy Hospitals" to acquire sites and to buy or build hospitals. One feature of the Act of 1811 required one of the establishments to provide a permanent "Asylum" for "decrepit and disabled naval officers, seamen, and marines."

In 1826, the Navy purchased an old plantation house in what was then Passyunk Township, Philadelphia County, for the Asylum, and soon moved sailors into the home while a larger and more permanent hospital was constructed. Architect William Strickland was commissioned to build the hospital building, which was under roof by 1832 and occupied by the end of 1833.

A small burial ground was established on the property, north of the Asylum, and behind an old stone barn. The graves extended about as far as the curbstone of the present Shippen (now Bainbridge) Street, which had been ordained, but the lines of which had not then been extended to the Schuylkill. Within a few years however, "the opening of avenues, and other improvements around the ground . . . rendered additional enclosures necessary." In 1836, with the opening of Sutherland Street (now Schuylkill Avenue) through the property, and the anticipated opening of Shippen Street, money was appropriated to enclose the Asylum's grounds with brick walls and to prepare and enclose a new burial ground.

About 100 bodies of those who had died in the old hospital, or of those who had been sent from the Navy Yard, or ships, for interment at this spot, were taken up at this time and reinterred in the new burial ground on the property.

Shippen Street was later opened and graded through the southern portion of the old burial ground around 1855. Today, housing sits on the site.