Triboro Hospital (Building T)

82-41 Parsons Boulevard | also 158-25 82nd Drive, 82-17 Parsons Boulevard | Hillcrest | built 1939

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

  1. 1939

    September 28

    Mayor La Guardia lays the cornerstone and calls the sanatorium a hospital for past mistakes

    Fiorello La Guardia had attended the groundbreaking for the city's new tuberculosis hospital on August 3, 1938, and returned on September 28, 1939 to set its cornerstone. At that ceremony he called it "the Hospital of Mistakes of the Past." Over the hospital's ceremonies he blamed the city's high tuberculosis rates on poor housing and on New York lagging behind modern medicine, and argued that slum clearance and better housing would one day make such institutions unnecessary.

    “The cornerstone for the hospital was laid by Mayor La Guardia on September 28, 1939.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1941

    January 2

    Triboro Hospital for Tuberculosis opens and takes in its first patients

    La Guardia opened the $3.5 million sanatorium on January 2, 1941, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt was unable to come dedicate it the previous November; a federal Public Works Administration grant paid about 40 percent of the cost. Three patients came over from Queens General that day, nine more from Kings County Hospital the next, and others from Bellevue. At the formal dedication on January 28, the mayor said it was built to become a general hospital in twenty-five years.

    “The hospital was opened by Mayor La Guardia on January 2, 1941. Costing a total of $3.5 million…”

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1941

    John Russell Pope's Art Moderne sanatorium is angled to catch the afternoon sun

    John Russell Pope designed the building, with Eggers & Higgins finishing the work after his death, under the eye of Hospitals Commissioner Sigismund Goldwater. The eleven-story gray brick and limestone block sits askew to the street grid on a hilltop along the terminal moraine, its entrance facing southwest toward Parsons Boulevard and 82nd Drive. Built for more than 500 patients, it was given three glass sunrooms per floor, cantilevered balconies and glass interior walls to expose patients to as much daylight as possible.

    “The building was designed by architect John Russell Pope, and later by the Eggers & Higgins firm after Pope's death, in Art Moderne-style.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 2014

    January

    Community Board 8 votes to tear down the decaying T Building to block a housing plan

    By 2012 the former sanatorium cost about $2 million a year to keep up, and repairs including asbestos removal were put at $50 million. When Queens Hospital Center proposed leasing it to Comunilife for 251 units of supportive housing, neighbors objected, and in January 2014 Queens Community Board 8 voted for demolition. Eleven architectural conservation groups were among the preservationists who opposed the vote.

    Source: Wikipedia

  5. 2019

    January 31

    The former tuberculosis hospital joins the National Register after the city approves its conversion to housing

    A year earlier, in January 2018, the City Council had approved Dunn Development Corporation's plan to turn the building into 206 affordable apartments, 75 of them for people earning under 60 percent of area median income, including formerly homeless people. New York State nominated the hospital to the National Register of Historic Places in June 2018, and it was listed on January 31, 2019.

    “On January 31, 2019 the hospital was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 3 buildings with stories in Hillcrest