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New York Cancer Hospital
The New York Cancer Hospital (NYCH) on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City was a cancer treatment and research institution founded in 1884. The building was located at 455 Central Park West between West 105th and 106th Streets, and built between 1884 and 1886 with additions made between 1889 and 1890; it was designed by Charles Coolidge Haight in the Late Gothic and French Chateau styles – inspired by the chateaux of the Loire Valley. It was the first hospital in the United States dedicated specifically for the treatment of cancer, and the second in the world after the London Cancer Hospital. After outgrowing the original building and moving, it became what is today known as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Around 1955, the hospital became Towers Nursing Home, and the building began its decline. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1976, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and was converted into luxury condominium apartments in 2001–2005 designed by Perkins Eastman Architects.
Although he died before it opened, J. Marion Sims was much involved in the founding of the hospital. Sims had been president of the American Medical Association and was arguably the country's most famous physician. He had resigned as director of the first Woman's Hospital, which he had founded, when the hospital board forbade the admission of cervical cancer patients.
In the summer of 1884, former President Ulysses S. Grant developed throat cancer. He lived in a brownstone at 3 East 66th Street, and his ensuing decline caught the attention of the nation. Considered incurable, as well as contagious and shameful, Grant's death the following year brought awareness of the disease. Although his cancer was inoperable, others were more fortunate, since the development of anesthesia in the mid-19th century had finally given doctors a surgical treatment for cancer.
In the year of Grant's diagnosis, John Jacob Astor III, Elizabeth H. Cullum, John E. Parsons, Thomas A. Emmet, Joseph W. Drexel and other prominent New Yorkers laid the cornerstone for the New York Cancer Hospital, the country's first to devote itself exclusively to the care of cancer patients. Designed by Charles C. Haight and completed in 1887, the first portion of the hospital, designated solely for women, was at the southwest corner of 106th and Central Park West. At the dedication, Grant's physician, Fordyce Barker, said that cancer was not due to misery, to poverty, or bad sanitary surroundings, or to ignorance or to bad habits, but a disease afflicting the cultured, the wealthy and the inhabitants of salubrious localities."
In 1890 the hospital was expanded south, and in both sections Haight designed circular wards, about 40 feet (12 m) in diameter, in part to facilitate better observation by a nurse at a central desk and in part because the design offered more space between the heads of the beds. Ventilation was a key concern, so a duct ran up the centers of the wards to remove what was said to be intense odors caused by the disease. Haight worked the round wards into the exterior architecture, which he executed in deep red brick and soft brown Belleville brownstone, with great conical towers irregularly placed on the three fronts.
The big, broad towers gave the hospital the character of a French château, like the Château de Chambord at Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, France, and made it one of the most important pieces of institutional architecture in New York even until today. It is widely said it would much more readily be taken for an art museum than for a hospital.
During the hospital's inauguration, treatment for cancer was mostly palliative. The hospital offered what was considered the best treatments available for that time. Cancer treatment then meant, at best, easing pain and making the sufferer as comfortable as possible. Many patients came to the New York Cancer Hospital, in effect, to die, assuaged by morphine. Other forms of relief included carriage rides in Central Park and Sunday services in the hospital's Chapel of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, patron saint of the suffering.
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New York Cancer Hospital
The New York Cancer Hospital (NYCH) on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City was a cancer treatment and research institution founded in 1884. The building was located at 455 Central Park West between West 105th and 106th Streets, and built between 1884 and 1886 with additions made between 1889 and 1890; it was designed by Charles Coolidge Haight in the Late Gothic and French Chateau styles – inspired by the chateaux of the Loire Valley. It was the first hospital in the United States dedicated specifically for the treatment of cancer, and the second in the world after the London Cancer Hospital. After outgrowing the original building and moving, it became what is today known as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Around 1955, the hospital became Towers Nursing Home, and the building began its decline. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1976, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and was converted into luxury condominium apartments in 2001–2005 designed by Perkins Eastman Architects.
Although he died before it opened, J. Marion Sims was much involved in the founding of the hospital. Sims had been president of the American Medical Association and was arguably the country's most famous physician. He had resigned as director of the first Woman's Hospital, which he had founded, when the hospital board forbade the admission of cervical cancer patients.
In the summer of 1884, former President Ulysses S. Grant developed throat cancer. He lived in a brownstone at 3 East 66th Street, and his ensuing decline caught the attention of the nation. Considered incurable, as well as contagious and shameful, Grant's death the following year brought awareness of the disease. Although his cancer was inoperable, others were more fortunate, since the development of anesthesia in the mid-19th century had finally given doctors a surgical treatment for cancer.
In the year of Grant's diagnosis, John Jacob Astor III, Elizabeth H. Cullum, John E. Parsons, Thomas A. Emmet, Joseph W. Drexel and other prominent New Yorkers laid the cornerstone for the New York Cancer Hospital, the country's first to devote itself exclusively to the care of cancer patients. Designed by Charles C. Haight and completed in 1887, the first portion of the hospital, designated solely for women, was at the southwest corner of 106th and Central Park West. At the dedication, Grant's physician, Fordyce Barker, said that cancer was not due to misery, to poverty, or bad sanitary surroundings, or to ignorance or to bad habits, but a disease afflicting the cultured, the wealthy and the inhabitants of salubrious localities."
In 1890 the hospital was expanded south, and in both sections Haight designed circular wards, about 40 feet (12 m) in diameter, in part to facilitate better observation by a nurse at a central desk and in part because the design offered more space between the heads of the beds. Ventilation was a key concern, so a duct ran up the centers of the wards to remove what was said to be intense odors caused by the disease. Haight worked the round wards into the exterior architecture, which he executed in deep red brick and soft brown Belleville brownstone, with great conical towers irregularly placed on the three fronts.
The big, broad towers gave the hospital the character of a French château, like the Château de Chambord at Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, France, and made it one of the most important pieces of institutional architecture in New York even until today. It is widely said it would much more readily be taken for an art museum than for a hospital.
During the hospital's inauguration, treatment for cancer was mostly palliative. The hospital offered what was considered the best treatments available for that time. Cancer treatment then meant, at best, easing pain and making the sufferer as comfortable as possible. Many patients came to the New York Cancer Hospital, in effect, to die, assuaged by morphine. Other forms of relief included carriage rides in Central Park and Sunday services in the hospital's Chapel of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, patron saint of the suffering.