Bayley Seton Hospital
Bayley Seton Hospital
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Bayley Seton Hospital

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Bayley Seton Hospital

Bayley Seton Hospital (BSH) was a hospital in Stapleton, Staten Island, New York City. It was a part of the Bayley Seton campus of Richmond University Medical Center but is permanently closed.

The campus was established in 1831 as a U.S Marine Hospital, and the current main building was constructed in the 1930s. In 1981, it became a private hospital.

Bayley Seton is located on a 20-acre (81,000 m2), 12-building site in the Clifton and Stapleton areas of the North Shore of the New York City Borough of Staten Island. The complex is bounded by Bay Street to the east, Vanderbilt Avenue to the south, Tompkins Avenue to the west, and residential development to the north. The block, with portions sold off over time, also includes Public School 721, the Richmond Center for Rehab & Specialty Care Center, the New York Foundling Hospital Staten Island, and an unaffiliated geriatric center.

On October 1, 1831, Staten Island's first hospital, the Seaman's Retreat, was opened here by the Marine Hospital Service, to serve retired naval and commercial sailors. Three of these original colonnaded structures remain as of 2024, dating from the 1830s and 1840s. The Marine Hospital Service provided medical treatment to naval personnel.

On May 6, 1857, the neighboring New York Marine Hospital (also the "Quarantine") in Tompkinsville, about 1 mile (1.6 km) north along the shore, was attacked by a local mob, fearful of the mostly immigrant detainees. The next year, on September 1, 1858, a mob again attacked the hospital, burning it down in what became known as the Staten Island Quarantine War.

A new quarantine center was created on Swinburne Island (a fill off the South Shore of Staten Island, about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) south of Fort Wadsworth). In 1874, some of these resources were transferred to the Marine Hospital Service buildings at what is now the Bayley Seton campus. The Seaman's Retreat was also housed there; when it moved around three miles (5 km) northwest in 1883, it became Sailors' Snug Harbor. At that point, the entire complex was operated by the U.S. Marine Hospital Service.

With this move came a greater need for the study of disease. In 1887, 28-year-old officer Joseph J. Kinyoun established a single-room Laboratory of Hygiene for Bacteriological Investigation on the top floor of the Marine Hospital, where it remained until 1891. The building still stands and is part of Bayley Seton Hospital. In 1902, the United States Congress passed legislation to fund the laboratory and move it to Washington where, as a result of the 1930 Ransdell Act, it became the National Institutes of Health.

In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt began a campaign to construct and maintain U.S. Public Health Service Hospitals, to serve the military, veterans, and the general public. As part of this process, the current main building of Bayley Seton was constructed. The Staten Island Public Health Service Hospital was built as a five- to seven-story hospital, in a Mayan revival style. Until 1981, it operated inpatient and outpatient services, emergency, surgery, and rehabilitation wards. Military installations at Fort Wadsworth, Fort Hamilton (just across the narrows in Brooklyn), the Staten Island Homeport, Miller Field Air Station, as well as air, naval and Coast Guard installations built during the Second World War assured a large military and veteran population for the hospital.

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