When New York’s St. Vincent’s Hospital closed in 2010 after years of financial strife, Greenwich Village lost a beloved 150-year-old institution that had served the poor and working class and was “ground zero” when the AIDS epidemic erupted in the 1980s. While most of the St. Vincent’s campus was demolished, a quirky precast-concrete building on Seventh Avenue between West 12th and 13th streets, designed by Albert Ledner and completed in 1964, remained. St. Vincent’s purchased it in 1973, but Ledner had designed the building to house the National Maritime Union Headquarters—hence its sturdy rectangular form and scalloped rows of porthole-style windows on the fourth and fifth floors.
Fast-forward to July 17, 2014: the O’Toole building, as it was known during its St. Vincent’s tenure, reopened its doors as the Lenox Hill HealthPlex, a stand-alone, 24-7 emergency department that is a division of Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. Once again, Greenwich Village has an emergency health-care resource and a lovable, weird New York building has been preserved, even as waves of new development rise around it. The facility also represents a countrywide trend. “We’re seeing a transformation in health care into this ambulatory environment,” says Jeffrey Brand, planning principal with Perkins Eastman’s national health-care practice, which turned the O’Toole building into the HealthPlex. “We probably have about eight projects that are all like this.”
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.