By Aliza Gans, Staff Writer
If you have ever made your way to or from the Wilf campus via the shuttle, perhaps you too have looked out the window and wondered what the decrepit, abandoned, ivy-covered building is that stands on Roosevelt Island. What could warrant a crumbling structure being left among the neat, modern skyline of New York City? A quick Google search will reveal that it was previously a smallpox hospital.
Back in the 1800s, the smallpox disease was highly contagious and was making its way through New York City. Blackwell Island, now known as Roosevelt Island, was bought by the city in 1828 and was home to a prison, a workhouse complex, a hospital, charity homes, an asylum and, in 1856, the Smallpox Hospital.
Designed by James Renwick Jr., who had also designed the city’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, he designed the hospital in the style of Gothic Revival. The building was constructed using labor from the nearby prison and asylum. Once completed, the hospital was able to serve 100 patients at a time, varying from charity cases to paying patients. The quality of care varied based on whether one could pay. While the smallpox vaccine was fairly widespread by the mid-19th century, the disease was still rampant in the city, and those who were too poor or distrustful of the vaccine would be afflicted and then sent to this island. During the Civil War, many of these patients were immigrants and Union soldiers.
The hospital was open for 19 years and treated about 7,000 patients during those years. Then, in 1975, despite new wings being added, the hospital was unable to keep up with the increase in patients, leading to the Smallpox Hospital’s operations being moved to North Brother Island, a previously uninhabited island near Rikers Island. This move also served as a way to lower the risk of spreading smallpox to the inhabitants of Roosevelt Island.
Simultaneously, Roosevelt Island was home to the Maternity and Charity Hospital Training School, which was just north of the Smallpox Hospital. Following the relocation of the Smallpox Hospital and due to the expansion of the school’s training programs, the empty hospital was converted into residential space for the student nurses. In the 1950s the program was relocated to Queens, leaving the buildings abandoned, with the former Smallpox Hospital falling into a derelict and dilapidated state.
In 1969, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission included the Smallpox Hospital on its list of buildings worthy of preservation, with it becoming part of the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Despite this status, the building continued to deteriorate and decay until 2009, when a 4.5 million-dollar project was undertaken to stabilize the remnants of the Smallpox Hospital, with lights being installed, highlighting the roofless structure.
In 2018, Friends of the Ruins, led by Stephen Martin, was founded to raise enough money to preserve the inside and previously gated off part of the Smallpox Hospital. In an article in Untapped New York, Martin explains why preserving the hospital is important to him, “The building serves as one of our last remaining artifacts of an era when New York City would warehouse its sick and disenfranchised,” he says. “Within its walls are the stories of our collective treatment of the poor, the sick, and those judged as unworthy by New York’s ruling classes.”
As New York City’s only landmarked ruin, this building stands in stark contrast to the modern architecture that surrounds it, holding in it not just haunting stories of the city’s past but also insights into its hopefully brighter future.
Photo Caption: Smallpox Memorial Hospital
Photo Credit: Aliza Flug