Presbyterian Hospital Building
622 West 168th Street | also 180 Ft Washington Avenue | Washington Heights | built 1930
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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.
- 1903
The future Yankees open Hilltop Park on this block
Before the medical center, this block between Broadway, Fort Washington Avenue, 165th and 168th Streets held American League Park, nicknamed Hilltop Park. The New York Highlanders, later renamed the Yankees, opened it on April 30, 1903, against the Washington Senators and played there until October 5, 1912. The park was torn down in 1914.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1920
Edward Harkness donates land for a hilltop medical center
Around 1920, philanthropist Edward Harkness joins the board of Presbyterian Hospital, by then affiliated with Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons since 1910, and donates land for a campus combining the hospital and medical school. Construction begins in 1925 on the Washington Heights site designed by James Gamble Rogers, and the hospital moves there from Madison Avenue when the new buildings open in 1928.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1928
Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center admits its first patients
On the site of the old ballpark, Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia's medical school built a joint medical center. The hospital's superintendent, John Bush, became the first occupant of the new Medical Center on February 1, 1928, and on moving day, March 26, 1928, it admitted its first patients.
- 1928
Hospital superintendent John Bush becomes the medical center's first occupant
Columbia's archives chronology records that John Bush, superintendent of Presbyterian Hospital, was the first occupant of the new Medical Center on February 1, 1928. The School of Nursing building, Maxwell Hall, was ready for occupancy on March 1. An Opening Day on March 16 let the public view the buildings before any patients were admitted.
- 1933
The Eye Institute opens and admits its first patient six days later
Columbia's archives chronology records that construction of the Eye Institute began in July 1931. The building opened on January 10, 1933, and admitted its first patient on January 16.
- 1935
Construction starts on a three-story addition to the Harkness Pavilion
In July 1935 the medical center began building a three-story addition to the Harkness Pavilion, together with a three-story service building just north of it to house radiology and therapy services. Columbia's archives chronology says both additions were finished by the summer of 1936.
- 1940
Charles Drew earns his doctorate for blood-banking work at Presbyterian Hospital
In 1940 Dr. Charles R. Drew received his Doctor of Medical Science degree from Columbia for the thesis "Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation." It drew on his work with Dr. John Scudder in the Presbyterian Hospital Blood Bank. Drew was the first African American to receive that degree at Columbia.
- 1940
A federal guide calls the 1928 hospital a pioneering structure
The Federal Writers' Project guide to New York City, published in 1940, named the 1928 hospital and the center's other original building among the pioneering structures of the late 1920s, when a utilitarian approach was replacing traditional styles. It noted the large flat windows, meant to admit the most daylight. The later AIA Guide takes the opposite view, calling the windows bulky and banal.
“…extolled the virtues of the 1928 building, and the other original building of the Medical Center, as "among the pioneering structures of the late 1920s…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1998
Presbyterian Hospital merges into NewYork-Presbyterian
In 1998, Presbyterian Hospital merges with New York Hospital to form NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, a single system with six campuses across Manhattan and Westchester County. The Washington Heights buildings that opened in 1928 with the Harkness Pavilion for private patients continue operating today as Columbia University Medical Center.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
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