Columbia University Irving Medical Center
630 West 168th Street | also 180 Fort Washington Avenue, 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.
- 1911
Columbia and Presbyterian Hospital sign the alliance that leads to the medical center
Edward S. Harkness had set out his hopes in a December 1910 letter while offering land and money. On April 25, 1911, Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University's trustees signed their first agreement, declaring that a permanent alliance would make the hospital more useful and a center of wider influence through education and research.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1912
Ty Cobb leaps the fence at Hilltop Park and attacks a heckler
Hilltop Park, the ballpark of the New York Highlanders, stood on the site of today's medical center. On May 15, 1912, Detroit's Ty Cobb was heckled for several innings there, leaped the fence and attacked his tormentor. League president Ban Johnson suspended him indefinitely, later cutting it to ten days and $50, and the Tigers briefly went on a one-game strike in protest.
“On May 15, 1912, after being heckled for several innings, Cobb leaped the fence and attacked his tormentor.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1915
Trustees announce a medical college and hospital on the old ballpark site
In May 1915 Columbia's trustees announced that the university had joined Presbyterian Hospital to plan a great medical college and hospital on ten acres where the American League ballpark once stood, bounded by 165th and 168th Streets, Broadway and Fort Washington Avenue. The Times said it called for a $7.5 million fund drive over five years.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1917
Billy Sunday's tabernacle fills the vacant Hilltop Park block
After the ballpark was demolished in 1914, the block that had held Hilltop Park was used in 1917 as the temporary site of a tabernacle for the evangelist Billy Sunday. Otherwise the land stayed vacant until Edward S. Harkness bought it to build what he intended as the world's first academic medical center.
“The block where Hilltop Park once stood was used as a temporary site for a Billy Sunday tabernacle in 1917.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1925
Ground is broken for the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center
Ground was broken on a sunny winter day, January 31, 1925. Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler called the turning of the soil the start of a union of scientific and philanthropic medicine, and Dean Sage of Presbyterian Hospital's board spoke of a long-held vision. The first building constructed housed the College of Physicians and Surgeons and Presbyterian Hospital.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1928
The Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center is dedicated on Columbus Day
The medical center was dedicated on October 12, 1928, nearly seven months after its first patients arrived. Honorary degrees went to Edward Harkness, who gave the land and money, to hospital board president Dean Sage, to architect James Gamble Rogers and to the building contractor.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1993
The Yankees place a home plate plaque on the hospital grounds
On September 30, 1993, a bronze plaque the size and shape of a regulation home plate was set on the hospital grounds. The New York Yankees donated it to mark the exact spot where home plate stood at Hilltop Park, where the team played as the Highlanders from 1903 to 1912.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
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