New York Cancer Hospital
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New York Cancer Hospital
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(2015)
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| Location | 455 Central Park West between West 105th and 106th Streets Manhattan, New York City |
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| Coordinates | 40°47′52″N 73°57′39″W / 40.79778°N 73.96083°WCoordinates: 40°47′52″N 73°57′39″W / 40.79778°N 73.96083°W |
| Built | 1884-86, additions: 1889-90 |
| Architect | Charles Coolidge Haight |
| Architectural style | Late Gothic Revival, French Chateau |
| NRHP reference # | 77000961 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | April 29, 1977 |
| Designated NYCL | August 17, 1976 |
The New York Cancer Hospital (NYCH) in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City was a cancer treatment and research institution founded in 1884. Located at 455 Central Park West between West 105th and 106th Streets, and built between 1884 to 1886 with additions made between 1889 and 1890, it was designed by Charles Coolidge Haight in the Late Gothic and French Chateau styles – inspired by the chateaux of the Loire Valley. It was the first hospital in the United States dedicated specifically for the treatment of cancer, and the second in the world after the London Cancer Hospital.
Around 1955, the hospital became Towers Nursing Home, and the building began its decline. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1976, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and was converted into luxury condominium apartments in 2001-05 designed by Perkins Eastman Architects.
In the summer of 1884, former President Ulysses S. Grant developed throat cancer. He lived in a brownstone at 3 East 66th Street, and his ensuing decline caught the attention of the nation. Considered incurable, as well as contagious and shameful, Grant's death the following year brought awareness of the disease. Although his cancer was inoperable, others were more fortunate, since the development of anesthesia in the mid-19th century had finally given doctors a surgical treatment for cancer.
In the year of Grant's diagnosis, John Jacob Astor III, Elizabeth H. Cullum, John E. Parsons, Thomas A. Emmet, Joseph W. Drexel and other prominent New Yorkers laid the cornerstone for the New York Cancer Hospital, the country's first to devote itself exclusively to the care of cancer patients. Designed by Charles C. Haight and completed in 1887, the first portion of the hospital, designated solely for women, was at the southwest corner of 106th and Central Park West. At the dedication, Grant's physician, Fordyce Barker, said that cancer was not due to misery, to poverty, or bad sanitary surroundings, or to ignorance or to bad habits, but a disease afflicting the cultured, the wealthy and the inhabitants of salubrious localities.
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