Saint Clare's Hospital (Manhattan)

Saint Clare's Hospital is a former Catholic hospital, located in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.

The hospital was founded in 1934 by the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany, based in upstate New York, to serve the working-class neighborhood, composed largely of Italian and Irish immigrants to the United States. It provided basic nursing caring, to help with this a school of nursing was founded.

From the services of basic medical care, in an effort to respond better to the changing needs of the neighborhood, the hospital expanded to provide a wide range of services, especially in the field of social service. One example of this was the founding in 1977 of a small shelter solely for homeless women, called The Dwelling Place. It was established by a small group of Franciscan Sisters who took over an abandoned brownstone near the hospital in order to house these women, who often refused to stay in the public shelters because they did not feel safe in them.

By the early 1980s the hospital had become St. Clare's Hospital and Health Center. It had a capacity of 250 beds, as well as a small psychiatric unit of 12 beds.

When AIDS began to emerge in the United States during the early 1980s, New York was one of the cities hardest hit by it. At that time there were no specialized faculties dedicated to the multiple needs of its early victims. Despite his disagreements otherwise with the gay community, the then-Archbishop of New York, Cardinal John J. O'Connor, approved and supported the opening of such a unit at St. Clare's to care for patients suffering from it, at a time when no known treatment existed.

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