Roosevelt Island's Historic Hospital

by Dora Sofia Caputo

Title

Roosevelt Island's Historic Hospital

Artist

Dora Sofia Caputo

Medium

Photograph - Photographs

Description

Roosevelt Island's Historic Hospital - Dora Sofia Caputo
The Smallpox Hospital, sometimes referred to as the Renwick Smallpox Hospital and later the Maternity and Charity Hospital Training School, is an abandoned hospital located at Four Freedoms Park, on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan, New York City. Originally designed by architect James Renwick Jr., the 100-bed hospital opened in 1856, when the area was known as Blackwell's Island.
A century after it opened, the hospital was closed, and the building eventually fell into disrepair. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and designated a New York City Landmark four years later, the only ruin in the city with that designation. After the completion of an ongoing $4.5 million stabilization project, the Smallpox Hospital ruins will be open to the public.
Located on the isolated southern tip of the island in an attempt to quarantine patients, the hospital contained a large charity ward in addition to private rooms on the upper floors. In 1875, the hospital closed and became a training center for nurses attached to City Hospital, later renamed Charity Hospital.
At the center of the front facade is the main entrance. It has a porch open on three sides, oriel window above and projecting corbeled feature above the roofline. A wide pointed arch holds the main entrance. Though designed in the Gothic Revival style, all of the windows on the third floor have pointed arches rather than curves, unusual for that architectural style. Architectural historian Paul Zucker, in his 1968 book Fascination of Decay, ascribed to ruins in general: "an expression of an eerie romantic mood ... a palpable documentation of a period in the past ... something which recalls a specific concept of architectural space and proportion." The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, in its 1976 report designating the ruins a New York City landmark, speculated that "The Smallpox Hospital could easily become the American equivalent of the great Gothic ruins of England, such as the late 13th century Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire, which has been admired and cherished since the 18th century as a romantic ruin," and described the building as "a picturesque ruin, one that could readily serve as the setting for a 19th century Gothic romance.

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March 14th, 2017

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