Lenox Hill Hospital - History

History

On January 19, 1857, the German Dispensary was founded. On May 28, 1857 the facility opened to the public at 132 Canal Street. In 1862, the German Dispensary moved to larger quarters at 8 East Third Street to accommodate the 10,000 patients it treated each year. The hospital continued to grow, and in 1884 moved to 137 Second Avenue, at East 8th Street. The new three-story building was a gift of Anna Ottendorfer and Oswald Ottendorfer, who ran the German language newspaper New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung. By 1887, the German Hospital and Dispensary was treating 28,000 patients annually, mostly from the local Little Germany neighborhood around First and Second Avenues below 14th Street.

In 1887, the hospital opened its nurses' training school with four young German-American women forming the first class. Until then, nursing attendants and charge nurses had been brought over from Germany.

In 1905, the hospital moved to the Upper East Side, at Fourth Avenue (Park Avenue) and 77th Street, at the same time that Manhattan's German community was increasingly abandoning Little Germany for the Yorkville section of the Upper East Side, within walking distance of the new hospital. The German Hospital had been leasing the mostly unused 77th Street site since 1865, when it was a swampy, goat-ridden tract of land, at an annual rent of $1. New York City deeded the square block to the hospital for $5000 in 1907. The Hospital had constructed a four-story building on site in December 1888, in order to add to its capacity from its downtown location. A five-story Training School for Nurses was added in February 1894 at 77th Street and Lexington Avenue. The New York Times noted in an 1899 editorial, "to be a graduate nurse of the German Hospital is a distinction and recommendation for good nursing."

In July 1918, the German Hospital was renamed Lenox Hill Hospital, tying it to the Lenox Hill section of the Upper East Side, in an effort to distance the institution from America's enemy in World War I. A movement in 1925 to restore the hospital to its former name, to appeal to potential donors of German descent, was eventually rejected by the board of trustees. It was said at the time that about 95 percent of the doctors, nurses and other employees of the hospital spoke German.

In February 1919, the hospital rejected a proposed merger with Columbia University.

In April 1931, the hospital completed a new $2.5 million 11-story building, with a facade made of light brick with limestone trim, on the 76th Street side of the hospital, replacing two apartment houses and several workshops. The pioneering children's division, founded by Dr. Abraham Jacobi, was housed on the 11th floor, with other patient rooms on the fourth through ninth floors, and operating rooms on the 10th floor. Another two-story building, containing a ward service, lecture hall and swimming pool was added next to the main building on the 76th Street side in 1936, at a cost of $150,000. By 1939, the Hospital had annually treated 12,115 patients with bed care, and another 23,099 visited the dispensary for treatment. Adding accident room patients, the Hospital treated over 53,000 people in 1939. Because some care was given for free or part-pay, the Hospital often ran an operating deficit, just as it did in 1939, when it lost $163,029, down from an over $200,000 loss the previous year, 1938. The Hospital's operating loss grew to $284,692 in 1945, then a record high. Due to a lack of funds, an anticipated additional new building was delayed for over 20 years, when a Second Century Development Program, designed to raise $10 million, was led by the Hospital's president, James Wickersham. Finally, on the Hospital's 100th anniversary, in 1957, it opened a $4.5 million 12-story building on Park Avenue at 77th Street, with a glass and aluminum facade, and a capacity of 180 patient beds. The new building, named the Wollman Pavillion, also housed a mental health unit, and an entire floor was allocated for research on speech and hearing disorders, epilepsy and hemophilia. In 1964, the Charles R. Lachman Community Health Center was added on the south side of East 77th Street, between the Wollman Pavillion and the William Black Hall of Nursing, which opened in 1962 (the School of Nursing closed in 1973). The Hospital opened its largest building, at 12 stories, in 1976, located at Park Avenue and 76th Street, replacing the Ottendorfer Dispensary, at a cost of $20 million. The modern brick masonry structure, with a fortresslike facade, stood in stark contrast in architectural style of the rest of hospital's buildings. The new building added 180 patient beds, for an overall capacity of 690 beds.

In December 1931 Winston Churchill, the future Prime Minister of Great Britain, was treated at Lenox Hill Hospital for eight days for injuries from when he was hit by a car while crossing Fifth Avenue (at 76th Street). On Lenox Hill Hospital's 100th anniversary, in 1957, he wrote, "I well remember the admirable care and attention I received ..."

In 1943, the hospital sent the medical unit to England to maintain station hospitals for military personnel. Throughout the remainder of World War II, Lenox Hill Hospital staff members served in all war theaters, including combat forces in the European theater of operations after D-day to the present day War in Iraq.

In 1998, a jury awarded $49 million in an obstetrics case against Lenox Hill Hospital, which was one of the largest medical malpractice verdicts in New York City at that time.