New York State Psychiatric Institute

1051 Riverside Drive | Washington Heights | built 1995

Open on the map5 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1929

    December 24

    The institute dedicates its original Washington Heights building at Columbia-Presbyterian

    After Governor Al Smith's 1923 bond issue and a 1925 affiliation with Columbia's medical school, the Psychiatric Institute dedicated its first building at the medical center on December 24, 1929. Edward Harkness, donor of the medical center site, had resisted bringing a state institution onto the campus until the dean persuaded him. That building served until the Riverside Drive home replaced it.

    Source: Internet Archive

  2. 1953

    Patient Harold Blauer dies after a secret Army experiment at the institute

    Harold Blauer, a patient being treated for depression, died in 1953 after being injected with the drug MDA in a U.S. Army experiment he had not agreed to. Officials hid what happened until a 1975 congressional inquiry into an unrelated matter stumbled on it. A federal judge ruled in 1987 that the government must pay his surviving daughter $700,000. The institute was then in its original building on West 168th Street.

    “In 1953, Harold Blauer, a patient undergoing treatment for depression at the institute, died following an injection of the amphetamine MDA given without his permission as part of a U.S. Army experiment.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1994

    May

    Ground is broken for a six-story research and hospital building on Riverside Drive

    In May 1994 work began on a new home for the institute on Riverside Drive, a six-story building for research, teaching and patient care. It replaced the Haven Avenue and West 168th Street building the institute had used since 1929. The new building opened in 1998 and connected by bridges to the Kolb Annex and Milstein Hospital Building.

    Source: Internet Archive

  4. 1998

    A new hospital building on Riverside Drive replaces the institute's 1929 home

    The Psychiatric Institute opens its new hospital building in 1998, replacing the original building that the institute opened in 1929. Overlooking the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge, it offers about 320,000 square feet, with beds for 60 inpatients, 23 specialty outpatient research clinics, classrooms and labs. Walkway bridges link it to the Kolb Annex and to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

    Source: columbiapsychiatry.org

  5. 1998

    Ellerbe Becket's Peter Pran and Timothy Johnson design the Herbert Pardes Building

    Peter Pran and Timothy Johnson of Ellerbe Becket designed the institute's building at 1051 Riverside Drive, named for Herbert Pardes, which was completed in 1998. Walkway bridges link it to the Lawrence G. Kolb Research Laboratory at 40 Haven Avenue. The old institute building at 722 West 168th Street became the Mailman School of Public Health in 1999.

    “…the Herbert Pardes Building at 1051 Riverside Drive was built in 1998 and was designed by Peter Pran and Timothy Johnson of Ellerbe Becket.”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 23 buildings with stories in Washington Heights