The ominous Bellevue Hospital Center: Old meets New

Born and raised in a suburb outside Dallas, rarely did I find myself within buildings dating back to the 19th century. After spending the first two years of my undergrad education in Boston and currently completing my junior year in New York City, coming in contact with a building aging over 200 years isn’t unusual. Yet something provocative struck me the first moment I laid my eyes on Bellevue Hospital Center, its indignant triangular arch perched high like Mount Olympus. In the midst of moving into the 26th St. NYU residence hall on the corner of 26th St. and First Avenue, I remember my mother remarking that the hospital notorious for their psychiatric (read: crazy, insane) facilities was a mere hop, skip, and jump away from my living quarters. Her comments only intensified the disturbing, yet vastly intriguing, vibe I felt towards the hospital each time I caught sight of the edifice. My interest increasingly piqued, like a sleuth I delved into research to uncover the truth of this mysterious neighborhood hospital. Unfortunately, Internet websites provided no such evidence, but every time I’ve brought up Bellevue in conversation with a native New Yorker they never fail to remark on the mental illness stigma surrounding the hospital’s past. The chance to explore this mystifying building in regards to the sense of place I personal confront daily could not be passed up for this assignment.

Bellevue Hospital Center is the oldest public hospital in the United States, founded in 1736 in the Alms House that stood at the site of the current City Hall in lower Manhattan. To put this in perspective, this ancient hospital was completed when George Washington was only four years old! Between 1908 and 1939 McKim, Mead, & White designed the hospital buildings that stand today at First Avenue and 27th St., thus leading to a cluster of dark brown and red bricked edifices alongside the East River, enhancing the ambiance which is my neighborhood. Bellevue has consistently been a part of almost every day I’ve spent in New York, but only from a distance. When it came time to become more intimate with the hospital I felt anxious as I crept on the sidewalk, which ran alongside the tall, wrought-iron fence, enclosing a small park area intended for patients and visitors to enjoy. I would have expected this park to be blooming with flowers and lively vegetation, birds chirping as they bathed in the fountains creating a peaceful atmosphere for recuperating patients and restless visitors. Instead, the un-kept, gloomy recreational area evoked an eerie presence as if I was passing by a sinister graveyard plotted with tombstones leading me to the doors of the ominous haunted house- Bellevue itself.