Knickerbocker Hospital
Coordinates: 40°48′57″N 73°57′11″W / 40.815825°N 73.953000°W The Knickerbocker Hospital was a hospital in New York City located at 70 Convent Avenue (prev. Amsterdam Ave.) corner of West 131st Street in Harlem, serving primarily poor and immigrant patients. Founded in 1862 as the Manhattan Dispensary, it served as a temporary Civil War tent facility for returning Union Army invalids. In 1885 the New York Times praised its rebirth as the fully equipped Manhattan Hospital, "the only general hospital north of Ninety-ninth street." The hospital assumed the city's largest ambulance district for many decades and became a forerunner in treatments for polio, alcoholism and gynecological care.
Manhattan Hospital was renamed the J. Hood Wright Memorial Hospital starting in 1895, and again renamed in 1913 as the Knickerbocker Hospital, and finally the Arthur C. Logan Memorial Hospital only a few years before closing in 1979.
The 1914 'Directory of Social and Health Agencies' listed the hospital as such:
The television series The Knick is set in a hospital inspired by the Knickerbocker. The Knickerbocker, similar to the television portrayal, had a standing policy often refusing to treat African-American patients despite the hospital's mission to serve those who could not afford to pay for medical care. In the television series, Clive Owen's character, Dr. John Thackery, is based in part on Dr. William Stewart Halsted.
Dr. Halsted, a well known physician who invented many new surgical instruments and techniques in the early 20th century was, like Thackery, according to the Johns Hopkins Institute, known to be addicted to cocaine and morphine.
The former Knickerbocker Hospital building still stands and is currently the M. Moran Weston seniors' residence.
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