Early versions of Chapter 4 of Rise of the Modern Hospital included a much more extended discussion of the 1904 Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. I ended up deleting all but the mention of its compact urban ward layout because the hospital has received mention if not extended coverage in a number of other works (including Thompson and Goldin’s The Hospital: A Social and Architectural History (Yale, 1975). The facility remains a signpost of a number of turning points.
It was one of the earliest examples of a ‘stacked’ pavilion hospital–a densely-planned, multi-story hospital on an urban site. Its designers consciously employed ‘defensive’ facility planning–arranging the various utilitarian hospital buildings around the block perimeter to protect the light and air access of the ward buildings from the encroaching shadows and noises of neighboring development.
S. S. Goldwater, who would go on to eminence as a hospital consultant–began his pioneering career with this project. Goldwater was the medical superintendent of the hospital during the planning and construction and he played a critical role in the realization of the building. From this project, he left his superintendency and launched a consulting career advising dozens of building committees, trustees, and architects on the medical requirements of hospital design. One of his first consulting projects after the Mount Sinai Hospital included the influential new Bellevue Hospital, designed in collaboration with McKim, Mead and White. Over his career Goldwater was involved in the planning of hundreds of hospital buildings.
The Mount Sinai Hospital design also provides a good example of the difficulty and expense of accommodating the ever-increasing demand for spaces for scientific medicine and research. The facility’s initial plans were for six-story structures, but skyrocketing prices on materials and labor in the first years of the new century put the contractor, Norcross of Worcester, Mass (a reputable firm) into severe financial difficulties. As the overall construction costs spiraled well beyond the initial cost estimate, the building committee compromised with the contractor and settled for five stories. The loss of that sixth floor meant the loss of space for laboratories on every floor, special examining rooms and accommodations for the special services.