Former site of Ebola Reston Monkey House

In 1989, Hazelton Research Products operated a quarantine station at this address, situated in a quiet office park in Reston, Virginia.  Known colloquially as “The Monkey House,” the facility received a shipment of monkeys from the Philippines that mysteriously began to die.

As the situation quickly intensified, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases was called upon to assist in the investigation. USAMRIID (aka The Institute) at Ft. Detrick in Frederick, Maryland was the only DoD facility equipped to handle research for Biosafety Level 4 infectious diseases.

A young research intern named Tom Geisbert was assigned to study samples taken from the monkeys and after viewing them under an electron microscope, he arrived at the shocking conclusion that he was looking at Ebola - one of the deadliest and most dangerous diseases known to humankind! 

All 450 monkeys at the Reston Facility were euthanized and extensive testing was performed on lab workers at the Hazelton facility.  None of the workers fell ill. By late November, the strain had been formally identified as “Ebola Reston,” a strain of the disease that is deadly to primates but fortunately not to humans.

A second round of the virus swept the facility in 1990 and four workers tested positive for Ebola Reston antibodies but none of them fell ill.  Following the second outbreak, the Hazelton facility was demolished.