The Lost Presbyterian Hospital - 70th Street and Park Avenue

 

The complex of buildings started with these two, the Administriation Building (left) and the Hospital.  They were connected by a covered walkway. The Architectural Record, December 31, 1895 (copyright expired)

Shortly after ground was broken, on January 13, 1870, The Evening Post wrote, "The Presbyterian Hospital, now in course of construction on Seventieth street, at the cost of one million of dollars, another benefaction of Mr. Lenox, furnishes at once a proof of the comprehensive philanthropy of the man, and the thoroughness at which he aims in his charitable enterprises."  

James Lenox had inherited the 30-acre Lenox Farm from his father in 1839 and in 1868 offered the block of 70th to 71st and Fourth (later Park) Avenue to Madison as the site of a Presbyterian Hospital.  (There were already a Roman Catholic and an Episcopalian Hospital in the city.)  Providing $250,000  towards construction of the facility, he rallied other millionaires to back the project.

On August 25, 1872, the New York Herald reported on the progress of construction, saying, "Visitors to the Central Park must have noticed the handsome structure running from Seventieth to Seventy-first street, between Madison and Fourth avenues.  This comprises the Administration building and one pavilion of the Presbyterian Hospital, the ground for which and the principal funds for erecting being the gift of Mr. James Lenox."  

The two buildings were part of a four-building complex designed by Richard Morris Hunt (who would become the favorite architect of the extended Vanderbilt family).  The Victorian Gothic administration building, with is prominent flèche, would be connected to the hospital building on 71st Street by two covered corridors.  His plans called for two 12-bed ward buildings on the avenue sides of the property.

Richard Morris Hunt's renderings depict his original plan for the complex.  Early Days of the Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York, 1926.

The buildings were faced in red Philadelphia brick and trimmed in limestone.  Between them was "a small structure which included the kitchen, laundry, and heating plants," according to Dr. David Bryson Delavan, in his 1926 Early Days of the Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York.  According to the New York Herald, construction of these buildings had cost $350,000, or about $9 million in 2024.

Dedication ceremonies took place in the administration building's chapel on the afternoon of October 10, 1872.  In reporting the event, The Evening Post mentioned that James Lenox had offered $125,000 towards an operating fund, provided that matching funds were raised.  The article said, "all but $50,000 of this sum had already been subscribed."

A polished granite plaque on the façade noted that the facility was aimed at those unable to pay for medical care.  Early Days of the Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York, 1926.

Esteemed architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler described Hunt's buildings in the Architectural Record on December 31, 1895 as, "a vigorously-grouped, picturesquely-outlined and aspiring mass, crowned with a flèche, and also showing here and there a Gothic detail, but of which the predominant expression is Parisian chic."

The New York Herald said the financial backers of the hospital "can now point to a noble pile of buildings consecrated to the sick and suffering as the realization of earnest purposes and long-cherished hopes."  The purpose of the Presbyterian Hospital, said the article, was twofold, "to afford medical and surgical aid to sick or disabled persons, and to provide them while inmates of the hospital with the ministrations of the Gospel."

The prominent fleche was utilitarian as well as decorative.  It provide ventilation to the building.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

On the night of December 19, 1889, fire broke out in the 71st Street building.  The next day, The Evening World reported, "The handsome wing of the Presbyterian Hospital on Seventy-first street is a picture of dreary desolation this morning."  Dr. David Bryson would recall decades later, "It burned so quickly that it was with difficulty the patients were rescued and the most valuable orderly of the hospital lost his life in his heroic efforts to save them."  One patient, 40-year-old William Hough, also died.

The building, which housed beds for 100 patients along with the two-story amphitheater, was severely damaged.  The Evening World reported, "The roof has been destroyed completely in many places, and has fallen in along the whole length of the building on Seventy-first street, while every floor is drenched with water and the rooms filled with mud and ashes."

Some patients were returned to the undamaged portions of the hospital, while others were taken to nearly-completed buildings on the property.  Construction had begun a year earlier on additional structures designed by J. C. Cady.  A spokesperson said that, "our new dispensary building and that adjoining it on Madison avenue and Seventieth street are not yet occupied, and that by Monday we will have accommodations there for at least forty of the exiled patients."

The Evening World reported, "It is probable that work will be begun immediately upon the main building, and that the cost of putting it in good condition will not exceed $30,000 at the most."  In the end, however, the building was replaced.

J. C. Cady dismissed Richard Morris Hunt's original plans.  His Romanesque assemblage that eventually embraced the original structures could not have been stylistically more different.  Dominating the complex was a soaring tower at the corner of 70th Street and Madison Avenue, the sole purpose of which was ventilation.  Stale air was pulled from the various buildings through basement vents and exhausted from the top of the structure.

A turn-of-the-century postcard depicted Cady's ventilation tower and the new hospital wing (left).

By 1898, only the administration building remained from Hunt's picturesque plan.  Cady's collection of structures varied from the original brawny Romanesque, to dignified Renaissance Revival.

The new layout of buildings as planned by J. C. Cady & Co.  Medical & Surgical Report of the Presbyterian Hospital, January 1898.

The Presbyterian Hospital was on the cutting-edge of medical technology.  In reporting that Niels Ryberg Finsen had been nominated for a Nobel Prize for his use of ultra-violet light in inhibiting the growth of bacteria, the New-York Tribune remarked on December 14, 1902, "it has been in use in the Presbyterian Hospital...for some time."

Four years later, the facility embraced another trend--what the New-York Tribune called on February 18, 1906, "the open air cure" for pneumonia.  The newspaper explained that, according to the theory, the lungs of a pneumonia patient needed "the pure fresh air of out of doors, just as pure and just as fresh as it can be obtained."  On the roof of the hospital building, cots were arranged for children patients.  The reporter said that in February, "basking in the sunlight of one of the coldest days New-York has had this winter, as contentedly as if the weather were that of June or July, were babies--real live ones."

On February 18, 1906, the New-York Tribune captioned this photograph, "Little pneumonia patients in their open air beds on the roof of the Presbyterian Hospital."

On May 15, 1921, the New York Herald headlined an article, "Columbia Combines With Hospital For Medical Research" and reported that the Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University had formed "an alliance" to create "a great centre of medical teaching and research worthy of the city of New York."  The article said gifts totaling $11 million had already been received "for site, buildings and endowment."  A site had been acquired in Washington Heights, it explained.

Five years later, on February 6, 1926, The New York Medical Week reported on the progress of construction.  "The first unit of the new Columbia Medical Center, to house the Sloane Hospital for Women, the Presbyterian Hospital and the College of Physicians and Surgeons has reached the twenty-second floor in its steel frame," it said.

from the collection of the Library of Congress

At the time of the article, the entire block where the 19th century building stood had been sold to investors.  Two years later, the complex designed by two of the 19th century's most recognized architects was razed and replaced by apartment buildings.

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