11. Bayley Seton Hospital

Seamen's Retreat abandoned buildings on Staten Island
Bayley Seton Hospital, in Staten Island’s Stapleton neighborhood, began as the Marine Hospital Service in 1831. The hospital was turned over to Saint Vincent’s Medical Catholic Center in 2000, which filed for bankruptcy in 2003 and soon after closed.

The current Bayley Seton campus was constructed around the Marine Hospital Service buildings. The MHS provided medical assistance to naval personnel, and Staten Island’s first hospital, the Seaman’s Retreat, was opened here. In what was known as the Staten Island Quarantine War, mobs burned down the nearby New York Marine Hospital in 1858, which led to increased need for medical centers with advanced technology to study diseases. On the top floor of the Marine Hospital, a man named Dr. Joseph J. Kinyoun established a laboratory to study bacteria, and after this laboratory moved to Washington D.C. with the help of Congress, it became the National Institutes of Health.

Bayley Seton Hospital
The main building of Bayley Seton was constructed during the 1930s in the Mayan Revival style and treated many veterans and military due to the large number of military, naval, and Coast Guard installations nearby. At the time, the hospital was known as the Staten Island Public Health Service Hospital, located right where the original Marine Hospital Service buildings were.

The hospital was sold to the Sisters of Charity in 1980, who renamed the hospital Bayley Seton after Elizabeth Ann Seton, a saint from New York, and her father Richard Bayley, the first chief health officer of New York City. Bayley Seton Hospital continued to expand in the 1980s and 1990s, including the opening of a woman’s drug abuse treatment center called Amethyst House.

In 2000, the Sisters of Charity turned the building over to Saint Vincent’s Hospital, but within just a few years, Bayley Seton lost many of its services including its emergency room and pharmacy. The Richmond University Medical Center noted that its HIV/AIDS center and adult and pediatric clinics at Bayley Seton would close. A deal was struck that the Salvation Army would purchase Bayley Seton and demolish the main hospital to create a recreation center.