Harlem Hospital Center

506 Lenox Avenue | Harlem | built 1965

Open on the map4 entries

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

1. 1907

   Harlem Hospital moves into a new 150-bed building on Lenox Avenue

   Founded in 1887 in a converted Victorian mansion at East 120th Street and the East River, Harlem Hospital takes over part of its present Lenox Avenue site in 1907 and opens a 150-bed facility there. Growth follows: a nurses' residence in 1915 and a 390-bed expansion, then a women's pavilion in 1935. In the late 1960s the eighteen-story Martin Luther King, Jr. Pavilion takes the place of the original 150-bed building.

   Source: nychealthandhospitals.org

2. 1919

   Dr. Louis T. Wright becomes the first African American on the surgical staff

   Louis Tompkins Wright came home from World War I service in France as an Army captain and settled in New York. In 1919 he was appointed to Harlem Hospital's surgical staff, the first African American to hold such a post. He pressed the hospital over its run-down conditions, worked to raise standards of care, and started a scholarly Harlem Hospital Bulletin. He remained on the staff until 1949.

   Source: blackpast.org

3. 1958

   September 20

   Martin Luther King Jr. undergoes surgery here after being stabbed at a Harlem store

   On September 20, 1958, Izola Ware Curry stabbed Martin Luther King Jr. with a seven-inch steel letter opener as he signed copies of Stride Toward Freedom at Blumstein's Department Store. King was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where surgery to repair the wound lasted more than two hours. Doctors said a sneeze or cough could have driven the blade into his aorta. Curry was later found not competent to stand trial.

   Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu

4. 1962

   Harlem Hospital affiliates with Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons

   In 1962 the hospital entered an affiliation with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Its residency programs under that tie include internal medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, radiology and surgery.

   Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

• Harlem Hospital CenterWikipedia

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