151 East 67th Street Building

History and architecture

This very handsome neo-Italian Renaissance style building at 149-151 East 67th Street was built in 1889-90 to serve as a dispensary for Mount Sinai Hospital. The hospital originally faced the dispensary from its site on the south side of East 67th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues. The dignified and elegant architectural expression of the clinic -- itself very much a product of late 19th-century social ideals — is an important element in the group of stylistically diverse monumental civic and institutional buildings on this East Side block.

Mount Sinai Hospital, the oldest Jewish hospital in the city, was founded as the Jews' Hospital in 1852 by a group of eight prominent Jewish citizens led by Sampson Simson, best known as Aaron Burr's confidential secretary. Established as a sectarian hospital "to afford surgical and medical aid, comfort, and protection in sickness to deserving and needy Israelites," it also cared for non- Jews in case of emergency. Beginning with the influx of wounded soldiers from the Civil War and injuries connected with the 1863 Draft Riots in New York City, the hospital began operating as a non-sectarian institution, changing its name to Mount Sinai Hospital in 1866.

The name evoked the Jewish origins of the hospital but removed the connotation of sectarianism that hindered the hospital in its early attempts to solicit public funds and private contributions. The hospital first occupied a site on West 28th Street, but as the city's growth encroached on what had once been open space surrounding the building, a new site was thought desirable. Repeatedly in the 19th century American hospitals sought open land which was believed to provide a healthier atmosphere, although by the end of the century this was recognized as impossible for urban hospitals.

An explosion of a steam boiler within 100 feet of the hospital in 1867 gave the impetus for a move uptown to a more peaceful site. In 1867 the board of the hospital began looking at a site on Park Avenue at 65th Street, an area which was rapidly becoming a center for hospitals and charitable homes. The Presbyterian Hospital already occupied a site at 70th and Park Avenue, and in 1870 the City gave land at Park and 67th Street to the Hahneman Hospital.

In 1868 the city granted Mount Sinai Hospital twelve lots on East 67th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues. A new hospital was erected there from the designs of Griffith Thomas between 1870 and 1872. French Second Empire in style, the hospital also employed a modified pavilion plan which had its origins in French hospital design.