Thursday, October 15, 2020 – See the different sites that were homes to Mount Sinai Hospital
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020
The
183rd Edition
From Our Archives
The Mount Sinai Hospital
at
Hamilton Square
Barbara J. Niss
Director, The Arthur H. Aufses, Jr., MD Archives
& Mount Sinai Records Management Program
All images are from the Arthur H. Aufses, Jr., MD Archives at Mount Sinai. For more information, contact Barbara Niss at msarchives@mssm.edu
Last Friday there was a wonderful piece in the RIHS From the Archives email about Hamilton Square, which existed on the Upper East Side from 1807-1869. I found this fascinating since, as mentioned in the article, The Mount Sinai Hospital moved to the site of the former Square in 1872. I knew that the City ‘seeded’ this area with non-profit entities: Hunter College, many hospitals, and schools, but I had never heard about the Square itself, which ran from 66th to 69th Streets between 3rd and 5th Avenues. Finally, Mount Sinai could have its Hamilton Moment! This is the story of how Mount Sinai ended up on the Upper East Side.
In 1867, The Mount Sinai Hospital (MSH) was located at 232 W. 28th Street, between 7th & 8th Avenues. It had been founded in 1852 as the Jews’ Hospital in the City of New York (the name was changed in 1866) and had opened its first building in 1855. After the Civil War, the leadership realized that the facility was inadequate and the location less than ideal due to the growth of the City. On November 2, 1867 the Directors authorized the purchase of ten lots of land from 65th to 66th Street on the west side of Park (then 4th) Ave. and later added eight more lots there. But then on October 6, 1868, the City leased Mount Sinai twelve lots of land at 66th to 67th on Lexington Ave. for $1 a year for 99 years. The earlier lots were later resold, saving Mount Sinai thousands of dollars. On May 25, 1870, the cornerstone for the second MSH was laid at 66th St. and Lexington Ave. The President of the Hospital, Benjamin Nathan, and Mayor Oakley Hall were there. (Within two months, Nathan was murdered in his bed on a ‘dark and stormy night.’)
On May 29, 1872 a dedication ceremony was held for the new Mount Sinai Hospital. When the new building opened, it had a greatly expanded capacity of 110 beds. It was three stories tall and included a basement and attic. The building was designed by the well-known architect, Griffeth Thomas, and cost $335,000 to complete. It had an operating room in the basement of the north wards, rooms for our new House Staff to live in, a meeting room for the Directors, and a synagogue. Lexington Ave. remained unpaved for two more years, and the Hospital never wired the facility for electricity. A telephone was installed in 1882; the number was “Thirty-Ninth St., 257”. It was at this site that Mount Sinai transformed from a 19th century hospital into what we would recognize as a modern hospital, with medical education and research joining its core mission of providing patient care.
In typical Mount Sinai fashion, this facility quickly became too small. Additional out buildings were built and major renovations were begun in 1882. In 1890, Mount Sinai added a building across from the Hospital on the north side of 67th St. for our Nursing School and Out Patient Department. This building is the only remnant of Mount Sinai that remains today. It later served as the home of the Neurological Institute, the Polish legation, and finally became a school for the Archdiocese of NY. The Mount Sinai Hospital moved from Lexington Ave. in 1904 to its current location on 100th St., between Madison and 5th Avenues. Apartment buildings now stand on the former site of the Hospital.
In 1881, Alma deLeon Hendricks and a small group of women founded The Mount Sinai Hospital Training School for Nurses. The school closed in 1971 after graduating 4,700 nurses – all women except one man in the last class. This is the Mount Sinai Legacy. www.mountsinai.org
The image shows medical rounds being done on a female ward. The nurses are all students in the Mount Sinai Training School for Nurses, and the woman on the far left is the Superintendent, Anna Alston. The desk in the foreground is the nurse’s station. The nurse in the left background is pouring medicine from the medical cabinet in the ward. Note the shelf above each bed to hold medicine or personal items. The plaques, obviously, recognize donors.
House Staff in 1902. It was taken on the roof of the Lexington Ave. building, so you can see a little of the neighborhood in the background. I picked this one because on the top right is S.S. Goldwater. Here is a description of the image from our database: House Staff of The Mount Sinai Hospital at the Lexington Ave. site. Seated on ground: Drs. Meyer M. Stark and Major G. Seelig. 2nd row: Drs. Alfred Fabian Hess, Edwin Beer, Eli Moschcowitz. Top row: Fred H. MacCarthy, D. Lee Hirschler, S. S. Goldwater.
Mount Sinai Moves Uptown
Early image of the Fifth Avenue hospital.
Base Hospital #3 set-up by Mount Sinai treated over 9,000 patients in the course of World War I. The hospital was located in a former monastery which had been a mental hospital before the Great War. To read the story of this unit go to:
https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-14230540R-bk#page/1/mode/2up
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SEND ENTRY TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
TRINKET FROM KIOSK FOR FIRST PRIZE WINNER
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
WILDLIFE FREEDOM FOUNDATION SHELTER AT SOUTHPOINT PARK
Vicki Feinmel was the first followed by Joan Brooks!!!
CLARIFICATION
WE ARE HAPPY TO GIVE WINNERS OF OUR DAILY PHOTO IDENTIFICATION A TRINKET FROM THE VISITOR CENTER.
ONLY THE PERSON IDENTIFYING THE PHOTO FIRST WILL GET A PRIZE. WE HAVE
A SPECIAL GROUP OF ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM. WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY ALL OUR ITEMS,.
PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE MUST LIMIT GIVE-AWAYS. THANK YOU
EDITORIAL
Thanks to archivist Barbara Miss, the Director of the Arthur H. Aufses, Jr., MD Archives at Mt. Sinai, we have the story of the hospital’s history at 67th Street. Most of our great hospitals have archives that are treasure troves of how these institutions were started and developed into the proud sites of medical achievements they are today. We are lucky that a dedicated group of archivists continue to gather and maintain their institutional history.
If you have contacts at other organizations we would love to feature them in FROM OUR ARCHIVES.
Judth Berdy
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)
Images are all from the Arthur H. Aufses, Jr., MD Archives at Mount Sinai.
For more information, contact Barbara Niss msarchives@mssm.edu
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
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rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
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