The new Sydenham Hospital which has just been completed on Manhattan Avenue at Hancock Square, New York City, was dedicated on Sunday afternoon. More than $2,000,000 went into the construction of the new building. Fireproof and modern in every detail, it has ten floors, with basement and cellar.
The site upon which the building is erected was the gift of Leon Schinasi. The building was designed by Charles B. Meyers, with whom were associated in planning the interior arrangements, Dr. S. S. Goldwater, well-known hospital consultant, and Dr. Siegfried Wachsmann, medical director of the hospital. The building was erected by G. Richard Davis and Company, with the cooperation of David Tishman, chairman of the Building Committee.
An outstanding feature of the hospital is the use of the color gray on the floors, walls and steel cabinet work. This color usage marks one of the most modern innovations in hospital decoration, which medical authorities now believe exert decided influence on a patient’s mental and physical condition.
An unusual addition to the hospital is the elevated platform in the operating room, where members of a family, or family doctors, may observe operations without being in the way. This platform is reached by a special staircase from the hallway, and is separated from the main operating room by a glass partition, which prevents possible infection.
The Sydenham Hospital first came into existence thirty years ago when it started as a medical clinic in a small private house on East 116th Street. After growing until it occupied a row of nine houses, its facilities were declared inadequate, and for four years following the war, it became dormant. Five hundred thousand patients received medical care during the thirty years of the hospital’s existence.
Construction of the present building was started in 1924, which marked the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dr. Thomas Sydenham, the great English physician whose name this hospital bears. The institution is non-sectarian.
The capacity of the new hospital is given as eighty-six ward beds, fortyfour semi-private beds, and twenty-six private rooms, making a total capacity of 156 beds. None of the public wards has more than six beds in it, with the average containing four.
Contributors to the building fund were as follows: Leon Schinasi, $100,000; from the estate of the late Isaac Guggenheim, $100,000; Eli H. Bernheim, $45,000; David Tishman, $35,000; Julius Lichtenstein, $35,000; Morris Schinasi, $25,000; Louis Bachman, $25,000; Ephraim B. Levy, $15,000; Harry F. Louchheim, $15,000; Paul H. Zagat, $15,000; Bernard Reich, $15,000; Murray Guggenheim, $10,000; the late Herman M. Gescheid. $7,000; the late Hannah Heyman, $5,000; Herbert Saloman, $6,000; Frederick Brown, $6,000; Herbert H. Maass, $6,000.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
