Bellevue Hospital
462 1st Avenue | also 466 1st Avenue, 484 1st Avenue, 464 1st Avenue | Kips Bay | built 1910
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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.
- 1798
The city buys the Belle Vue farm by the East River to isolate yellow fever patients
The institution began on March 31, 1736, as the city's first permanent almshouse, a two-story brick building on the city common. During the yellow fever outbreaks of the 1790s, the city bought the Belle Vue farm on the East River in 1798 as a place to quarantine the sick. The hospital grew on this land and was formally named Bellevue Hospital in 1824.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1873
Bellevue opens the nation's first nursing school based on Florence Nightingale's principles
Bellevue built a record of firsts in the 19th century. It is credited with the first maternity ward in the United States in 1799, started the country's second hospital-based ambulance service in 1872, and in 1873 opened the first American nursing school modeled on Florence Nightingale's principles. It added the nation's first emergency pavilion in 1876.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1884
Bellevue opens the Carnegie Laboratory, the country's first pathology and bacteriology lab
In 1884 Bellevue opened the Carnegie Laboratory, the first pathology and bacteriology laboratory in the country. It arrived eleven years after the hospital started its nursing school on Florence Nightingale's principles. The lab was one of the early medical firsts at Bellevue, which later grew into today's hospital complex.
Source: Untapped New York
- 1918
New York City's medical examiner's office begins work in Bellevue's R&S Building
The city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner began work in Bellevue's R & S Building in 1918. In 1960 the office opened a new headquarters of its own at 520 First Avenue, nearby on the same avenue.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1919
Spy Fritz Duquesne escapes Bellevue's prison ward disguised as a woman
Fritz Duquesne, facing extradition to Britain on murder charges, pretended to be paralyzed and was sent to Bellevue's prison ward, where he faked a lame right leg and carried a cane until May 1919. Days before he was due to be extradited, he dressed as a woman, cut through the bars of his cell and scaled the ward's walls. He fled to Mexico and then Europe and did not surface in the records again until 1926, under a new identity.
Source: Untapped New York
- 1970
The Gay Liberation Front demonstrates outside Bellevue after a trans woman's psychiatric confinement
In 1970 Chris Thompson, a Black trans woman, went to Bellevue for asthma treatment but was moved to the psychiatric wing and housed in the men's unit because staff fixated on her cross-dressing. She told activist Sylvia Rivera and journalist Arthur Bell, who interviewed her there, that she felt like a prisoner. On October 5, 1970, the Gay Liberation Front held a demonstration outside the hospital demanding an end to the oppression of homosexuals.
Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project
- 1980
Mark David Chapman is sent to Bellevue for psychiatric evaluation after killing John Lennon
After killing musician John Lennon in 1980, Mark David Chapman was sent to Bellevue for a psychiatric evaluation and was later moved back and forth between Bellevue and Rikers Island. The hospital's long record of treating the mentally ill had made its name a local slang term for a psychiatric hospital.
“Mark David Chapman, was treated at Bellevue for psychiatric evaluation after he shot and killed musician John Lennon in 1980…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1985
Bellevue registers more AIDS patients than any other hospital in the country
Bellevue counted over 400 registered AIDS patients in 1985, more than any other hospital in the United States at that point. The count came a year after the city closed large parts of Bellevue's psychiatric hospital, a place that, from the 1930s to the 1970s, LGBT people, especially trans people, associated with medical experimentation and involuntary confinement.
Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project
- 2001
The Bellevue Literary Review publishes its first issue
The Bellevue Literary Review, billed as the first such journal to emerge from a medical setting, put out its first issue in 2001. Bellevue Literary Press followed, publishing its first books in 2007. A New York Times piece in October 2002 greeted the review with the headline "A Literary Review at Bellevue? Believe it."
“The Bellevue Literary Review, the first literary journal to arise from a medical setting, published its first issue in 2001.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2012
Hurricane Sandy floods the basement and forces Bellevue to evacuate
When Hurricane Sandy hit New York in October 2012, severe flooding in the hospital's basement forced Bellevue to evacuate its patients. The hospital's main patient tower, known as the Cube, had been built along the FDR Drive in 1971–74. In November 2015 the hospital was renamed NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2014
Bellevue isolates the city's first Ebola patient, Dr. Craig Spencer
In 2014 Bellevue made national headlines by treating the city's first Ebola patient, Craig Spencer, who had caught the virus treating patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. He was placed in isolation at the hospital. Reports traced his movements the day before, which included rides on the A and L trains and in a taxi.
Source: Untapped New York
- 2015
Bellevue is renamed NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue
The city renames Bellevue Hospital "NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue," reflecting a rebranding of its parent public hospital system. The change comes three years after Hurricane Sandy's flooding forced an evacuation of patients from the hospital's main building. The centuries-old public hospital keeps the Bellevue name inside its new title.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Bellevue HospitalWikipedia
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