Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan)

Based on Wikipedia: Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan)

Sampson Simson, an Orthodox Jewish philanthropist, gathered seven other Jewish benefactors and founded what was originally called The Jews' Hospital in the City of New York. It was the second Jewish hospital in the United States, after the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, established in 1847. The new institution opened its doors on West 28th Street in Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, on land donated by Simson—and it would take two years after the hospital's founding for Simson to die, a detail that speaks to the urgency these founders felt about their community's needs.

The timing proved unforgiving. Four years after opening, the hospital was unexpectedly filled to capacity with soldiers injured in the American Civil War. The institution felt the effects of the escalating conflict in other ways: staff doctors and board members were called into service. Dr. Israel Moses served four years as lieutenant colonel in the 72nd New York Infantry Regiment. Joseph Seligman resigned from the board of directors because he was increasingly called upon by President Lincoln for advice on the country's growing financial crisis—a crisis so acute that Lincoln would soon be forced to borrow money from Jewish financiers to fund the Union's war effort.

The New York Draft Riots of 1863 strained the hospital's resources further, as staff struggled to tend to the many wounded. But something shifted in those years of hardship. The Jews' Hospital, born out of exclusion, found itself becoming an integral part of the general community. In 1866, to reflect this new-found role, it changed its name to Mount Sinai Hospital.

By 1872, the institution moved uptown to the east side of Lexington Avenue between East 66th and 67th streets—a relocation that positioned it precisely where it stands today, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, stretching along Madison and Fifth Avenues between East 98th Street and East 103rd Street, at the eastern border of Central Park. This was no accident. The hospital's leadership had recruited Abraham Jacobi—known as the father of American pediatrics and a champion of construction—to advocate for the new site's development. When the early 20th century saw New York City's population explode, Mount Sinai was ready.

The institution established its school of nursing in 1881, created by Alma deLeon Hendricks and a small group of women. Taken over by the hospital in 1895, it changed its name in 1923 to Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing—eventually closing in 1971 after graduating 4,700 women and one man in the last class. An active alumnae association continues to exist to this day.

That explosive population growth, coupled with new discoveries at Mount Sinai—including significant advances in blood transfusions and the first endotracheal anesthesia apparatus—meant that Mount Sinai's pool of doctors and specialists was in increasing demand. A $1.35 million expansion ($48.4 million in current dollar terms) of the 1904 hospital site raced to keep pace with demand. The opening of new buildings was delayed by the advent of World War I.

Mount Sinai responded to a request from the United States Army Medical Corps with the creation of Base Hospital No. 3. This unit went to France in early 1918 and treated 9,127 patients with 172 deaths: 54 surgical and 118 medical, the latter due mainly to influenza and pneumonia. Two decades later, with tensions in Europe escalating again, a committee dedicated to finding placements for doctors fleeing Nazi Germany was founded in 1933. With the help of the National Committee for the Resettlement of Foreign Physicians, Mount Sinai Hospital became a new home for a large number of émigrés.

When World War II broke out, Mount Sinai was the first hospital to throw open its doors to Red Cross nurses' aides; it trained many in its effort to reduce the nursing shortage in the United States. Meanwhile, the president of the medical board, George Baehr, M.D., was called by President Roosevelt to serve as the nation's's chief medical director of the Office of Civilian Defense.

These wartime roles were eclipsed when the men and women of Mount Sinai's 3rd General Hospital set sail for Casablanca, Morocco, eventually setting up a 1,000-bed hospital in war-torn Tunisia. Before moving to tend to the needs of soldiers in Italy and France, the 3rd General Hospital had treated more than 5,000 wounded soldiers.

The mid-20th century brought further transformation. In 1963, the hospital created a medical school, and in 1968, it welcomed the first students of what would become the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The 1980s saw a $500 million hospital expansion, including the construction of the Guggenheim Pavilion—the first medical facility designed by I.M. Pei.

The innovations that emerged from Mount Sinai's halls are staggering. In 1986, its staff performed the first blood transplant into the vein of a fetus—literally giving life where none existed. In 1995, the hospital developed a technique for inserting radioactive seeds into the prostate to treat cancer. In 2005, Mount Sinai performed the first successful composite tracheal transplant.

The hospital's contributions continued into the twenty-first century: first gene variant linked to autism identified; Zahi Fayad, PhD, and Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, developed a technique called "black blood MRI" to detect vulnerable arterial plaque; antiretroviral treatments for HIV+ patients with renal failure were published as the first medical publication along with Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine; Bruce Gelb, MD, co-discovered that mutations in PTPN11 cause Noonan syndrome, inaugurating the Ras/MAPK "RASopathies" disease family.

The hospital's faculty has made significant contributions to gene therapy, cardiology, immunotherapy, organ transplants, cancer treatments, and minimally invasive surgery. In 2013, David L. Reich became the first openly gay medical doctor named interim president of Mount Sinai Hospital as reported by The New York Times—and in October of the same year, he was formally named president.

Today, Mount Sinai is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. It is a tertiary and quaternary care facility offering care in all medical and surgical specialties and subspecialties. It is an AIDS center, Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) Program Hospital, Comprehensive Stroke Center, and Regional Perinatal Center. Its maternity program is among the busiest in New York State with just over 7,000 deliveries per year.

Adjacent to the hospital sits the Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital, which provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21 throughout the region. In February 2025, Newsweek ranked Mount Sinai 19th among over 2,400 hospitals in the world—and the best hospital in New York state.

What began as an act of defiance against discrimination has become one of the most renowned medical institutions on Earth. The hospital's founding story—a response to exclusion—has been completely reversed. Now, it welcomes everyone who walks through its doors. But the original mission remains: to ensure that no one is turned away from care because of who they are.