2. Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Center
The Edward and Theresa O’Toole Medical Services Building of St. Vincent’s Hospital, not Lenox Health Greenwich Village
Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Center in Greenwich Village was a major teaching hospital that was founded in 1849 and served a wide range of New Yorkers until its closure on April 30, 2010. SVCMC placed significant emphasis on patient-focused healthcare centered around respect, integrity, compassion, and excellence. The hospital admitted patients regardless of their religion or ability to pay.
The hospital was originally opened by the Sisters of Charity as a thirty-bed hospital in a small brick house to serve the poor as one of New York’s only charity hospitals. SVCMC opened during New York’s cholera epidemic, and a typhoid epidemic in 1852 filled the hospital to capacity once again, prompting the Sisters to move locations to a former orphanage. The hospital introduced its first horse-drawn ambulance in 1870. According to a New York Times article, the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay got her middle name from the hospital, which saved her uncle’s life.
SVCMC responded to and treated patients of major events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the sinking of the Titanic, the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing, and 9/11. The hospital established the first AIDS ward on the East Coast and the second one in the country. However, the hospital filed for bankruptcy in 2005, and leading up to its closing, the New York Department of Health announced that there would be no need for an acute care hospital like SVCMC in Greenwich Village.
After struggling for the decade to keep the hospital open, its emergency room closed in 2010. The building, which sat across from Edward and Theresa O’Toole Medical Services Building (above), was completely demolished in 2013, and a new luxury building called Greenwich Lane has since replaced the hospital.