Gouverneur Hospital

621 Water Street | also 1 Gouverneur Slip West, 2 Gouverneur Slip East, 323 Franklin D Roosevelt Drive | Lower East Side | built 1898

Open on the map4 entries

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

1. 1885

   October

   An emergency hospital opens on a waterfront site once used as a police station and market

   Charity Commissioner Thomas S. Brennan proposed a branch of Bellevue at Gouverneur Slip for a riverfront of brothels, saloons and gambling dens. The three-story brick hospital, finished in October 1885 for $14,000, had only 30 beds and treated accident cases before transferring patients to Bellevue. The Times noted the ground had been a police station, then a market, then a haunt of thieves. This was an earlier building on the site, later replaced by the present hospital.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

2. 1901

   January 5

   The new Gouverneur Hospital opens after a quarrel between two city commissioners

   Designed by John R. Thomas and finished in October 1900, the four-story red brick and terra cotta hospital opened January 5, 1901, after a public quarrel between Charities Commissioner John W. Keller and Henry S. Kearny, the Public Buildings Commissioner. It held 104 patients, and the Times called it the best equipped in the Charities Department, noting the department's only X-ray machine. Only the north wing was built at first; in 1903 the city turned to a south wing, which Raymond Almirall designed to match.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

3. 1936

   WPA artist Abram Champanier paints Alice in New York Wonderland for the children's ward

   In 1936 Abram Champanier began fifteen oil-on-canvas murals for the children's ward, each about seven feet tall. They set a thoroughly modern Alice in the Central Park Zoo, the Coney Island playground and the New York Public Library, and had her flying over the East River bridges. The murals were part of the Works Progress Administration's Depression-era work program for artists.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

4. 1980

   A conservator removes the Alice murals the night before bulldozers were due

   After the hospital closed in 1961 it sat empty with broken windows, and in 1980 the city put it up for sale with demolition threatened. Landmarks Preservation Commission staff Andrew Scott Dolkart and Eddie Friedman alerted conservator Allan Farancz, because no agency would pay to remove and restore the murals. Farancz took them out at his own expense on the night before the children's ward was to be destroyed. He stored them, and they were conserved one by one, with one installed in the new Gouverneur Hospital.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

• Gouveneur Hospital - 621 Water StreetDaytonian in Manhattan

Nearby

• 333 Madison Street4 entries
• 292 Henry Street5 entries
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• Henry Street Settlement (No. 263)263 Henry Street | 4 entries

All 78 buildings with stories in Lower East Side