5. Morrisania Hospital


Located about a half-mile north of Yankee Stadium, Morrisania Hospital opened on July 1, 1929 and closed exactly 47 years later, on June 30, 1976, a casualty of New York’s mid 1970s fiscal crisis. It was a 400-bed municipal facility designed by architect Charles B. Meyer & Associates in a distinctive Italian Renaissance style. Curiously, despite its name, it’s not located in the Morrisania neighborhood, which is located several blocks to the east.
It was vacant and decaying for over two decades after it shuttered in the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, but in 1997 it reopened with affordable housing, job training programs, and other community services. These include a health clinic in the former nurses residence wing. Renamed Urban Horizons, it is operated by the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDco).

According to the New York Times, the 400-bed hospital’s first patient was a 5-year-old boy named Michael O’Brien who was injured after falling on broken glass in the street. When New York City experienced a smallpox outbreak in April 1947, the Daily News reported about “the hundreds of New Yorkers who lined up at Morrisania Hospital” to receive free vaccinations, with the queue snaking around the block.