Lenox Hill Hospital

Coordinates: 40°46′25″N 73°57′40″W / 40.77361°N 73.96111°W / 40.77361; -73.96111

Lenox Hill Hospital
Northwell Health

A tall brick building with a dark green awning at street level reading "Lenox Hill Hospital Emergency Entrance". On the street in front are two ambulances and a sport-utility vehicle with flashers in the same color scheme with "Paramedics" on the side.

East 77th Street entrance to hospital
Geography
Location 100 East 77th Street, New York, New York, United States
Organization
Care system Private
Funding Non-profit hospital
Hospital type Teaching
Affiliated university
Services
Beds 652
History
Founded 1857
Links
Website northshorelij.com/lenoxhill
Lists Hospitals in New York

Lenox Hill Hospital, in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of Manhattan's Upper East Side in New York City, is a 652-bed, tertiary-care hospital and a member of Northwell Health and a teaching hospital of Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, New York Medical College, State University of New York Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, Long Island University and Pace University. It was founded in 1857 as the German Dispensary.[1]

It currently consists of ten buildings and has occupied the present site in Manhattan since 1905, when it was known as the German Hospital. The hospital is located on a city block bounded on the north and south by 77th and 76th Streets, and on the west and east by Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue. The New York City Subway's 77th Street station is on the same block.

In 2007, the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital (MEETH) was incorporated into Lenox Hill Hospital. The hospital's Executive Director is Dennis Connors.

History

A colored postcared image of a building identified as the German Hospital with the mansard roof
Lenox Hill Hospital, 1868

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.[1]

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

In 1865, the German Hospital had started leasing a site on the Upper East Side, at Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue) and 77th Street, a swampy, goat-ridden tract of land for which the hospital paid an annual rent of $1. The site remained mostly unused until a four-story building was constructed there in December 1888 in order to add to the 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."

The hospital moved to the 77th Street location entirely in 1905, about the same time that Manhattan's German community was increasingly abandoning Little Germany for the Yorkville neighborhood, within walking distance of the new hospital. New York City deeded the square block on to the hospital for $5,000 in 1907. The building on Second Avenue was sold to another medical charity, the German Polyklinik, founded in 1883, which later changed its name to Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital.[2]

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.

The hospital rejected a proposed merger with Columbia University in February 1919.

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.

The entrance to the Sherman and Gloria H. Cohen Plaza and Gallery at 125 East 76th Street

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 Pavilion, 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 Pavilion 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.

The hospital sent a medical unit to England in 1943 to maintain station hospitals for military personnel. Throughout the remainder of World War II, hospital staff members served in all theaters of war, including with combat forces in the European theater of operations after D-Day.

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

In 2007, Lenox Hill Hospital was ranked among the nation's top 50 hospitals in Heart and Heart Surgery (#15), Orthopedics (#26) and Neurology & Neurosurgery (#45) according to U.S. News & World Report's annual survey on America's Best Hospitals.

The hospital's building underwent masonry and roof restorations conducted by Merrit Engineering Consultants, P.C. from 2007 to 2009. Façade restoration, waterproofing, and structural steel repairs were also conducted.[3]

On May 19, 2010, the hospital announced that an agreement had been finalized for it to join the North Shore-LIJ Health System.

Contributions to modern medicine

The Lenox Hill Hospital sidewalk clock on Lexington Avenue

The hospital became a leading innovator in medical care, developing and implementing many standards and practices that would later become indispensable components of modern medicine.

In 1897, the hospital installed one of the first X-ray machines in America. Ten years later, the hospital established the first physical therapy department in the country. In response to what was becoming a growing public health threat, it was the first general hospital in the U.S. to open a tuberculosis division. In 1973, the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma became the first hospital-based center in the nation for the study of sports medicine.

Early on, the hospital established itself as one of the nation's leading hospitals for cardiac care. In 1938, the first angiocardiograph in the country was performed at the hospital, and in 1955 the hospital became one of the first in New York City to open a cardiac catheterization laboratory. Ten years later, the hospital opened the first cardiac-care unit in the metropolitan New York area.

In 1978, the first coronary angioplasties in the country were performed at Lenox Hill Hospital and at St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco, California. In 1994, Lenox Hill Hospital surgeons pioneered minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass surgery and in 2000, the hospital was the first in the U.S. to perform endoscopic radial artery harvesting. In 2003, the first drug-coated stent approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was implanted at the hospital. It is also one of the first hospitals in the nation to acquire a state-of-the-art robotic cardiac system, which allows surgeons to perform minimally invasive heart-bypass surgery.

In 2000, Lenox Hill Hospital became the sponsor of Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital.

Continuing its tradition of care during times of crisis, the hospital assembled a disaster team to care for casualties of the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center in 2001. Emergency crews were sent to Ground Zero and supply runs to the area were conducted to aid the rescue workers. The hospital set up a free walk-in Crisis Counseling Center, staffed by the hospital's psychiatrists and therapists and the blood donor center was expanded to accommodate the thousands of people who came to the hospital to give blood.

In 2007, the hospital celebrated its 150th anniversary, and expanded its dedication to the New York City community by opening a new, state-of-the-art Emergency Department, the Anne and Isidore Falk Center for Emergency Care at Lenox Hill Hospital.

Medical milestones and pioneers

Many important milestones in the advancement of medical knowledge have been made at the hospital, including:

Many medical pioneers were early members of the hospital's attending staff. Among them were:

  • Henry Jacques Garrigues – introduced antiseptic obstetrics to North America
  • Willy Meyer, M.D. – performed some of the earliest pulmonary surgery in America
  • Abraham Jacobi, M.D. – the father of American pediatrics
  • Leo Buerger, M.D. – described the disease that bears his name
  • Carl Eggers, M.D., and Dewitt Stetten, M.D. – founding members of the American College of Surgeons
  • Franz Torek, M.D. – performed the first successful esophagectomy for carcinoma and also developed the surgical treatment of undescended testicles
  • William H. Stewart, M.D. – a former director of radiology, performed the first angiocardiogram in the United States in 1938.
  • Simon Stertzer, M.D. of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and Richard K. Myler, M.D. of St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco – performed the first coronary angioplasties in the United States on the same day, March 1, 1978

Current use

Lenox Hill Hospital today provides a wide range of inpatient medical/surgical, obstetric, pediatric and psychiatric services. The hospital has both primary care and specialty outpatient clinics, an ambulance service and an emergency department. Special programs and services include interventional cardiology and a cardiovascular surgery program that are among the busiest and most highly regarded in the region; a New York State-designated AIDS center program; a high-risk neonatal care service; an active obstetric service; a growing ambulatory surgery program; a growing renal dialysis service; and a community health education and outreach program. Other licensed services include cystoscopy, diagnostic radiology services including CT and MRI scanning, nuclear medicine, and therapeutic radiology. Licensed outpatient services include primary care medicine, pediatrics, prenatal care and family planning, physical therapy, audiology, speech/language pathology, and social work. The hospital is licensed to provide both inpatient and outpatient adult mental health services. Its active ambulance service has as its primary territory 59th Street to 96th Street, from Central Park to the East River. Approximately 325,000 people a year receive care at Lenox Hill Hospital.

Notable patients

Other well-known people treated at the hospital include actresses Elizabeth Taylor and Peggy Cass, singers Barry Manilow, Karen Carpenter, and Rosemary Clooney, New York Jets defensive end Dennis Byrd following his spinal cord injury, the former General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, television journalist Mike Wallace, John F. Kennedy, Jr., actor and singer James Maslow, boxer Rocky Graziano, New York socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor, conductor James Levine, first lady Pat Nixon, and actor James Cagney.

Notable deaths at the hospital

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Staff (n.d.). "Our History". Lenox Hill Hospital. Retrieved July 31, 2012. In 1857, a group of community leaders recognized the need for medical services among the immigrant community and came together to found the German Dispensary. ...
  2. ↑ "Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital Designation Report" New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (November 9, 1976)
  3. ↑ "Building Restoration". Merritt Engineering Consultants, P.C.
  4. ↑ TODAY Show: Tina Fey and Jane Krakowski Discuss 30 Rock. YouTube. January 10, 2012.
  5. ↑ Carbone, Nick (January 8, 2012). "Beyoncé’s Baby Arrives: Blue Ivy Carter Born Saturday in New York City". Time (Time Inc.). Retrieved March 31, 2015.
  6. ↑ "Chelsea Clinton gives birth to baby girl". NY Daily News.
  7. ↑ Strohm, Emily (March 27, 2016). "Seth Meyers Welcomes a Son". People. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  8. ↑ Robert D. McFadden (February 23, 1987). "David Susskind, Talk-show Host, Dies At 66". The New York Times. Retrieved July 31, 2012. David Susskind, the television producer and one of the country's earliest and best-known television talk-show hosts, was found dead, apparently of natural causes, yesterday afternoon in his hotel suite in midtown Manhattan. He was 66 years old.... According to the police, Mr. Susskind had been under a doctor's care for a heart ailment and had been scheduled to enter Lenox Hill Hospital today.

External links

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