East 149th Street and Trinity Avenue, northwest corner, 1938.

East 149th Street and Trinity Avenue, northeast corner, 1938.

Lincoln Hospital, 1936. Established in 1839 as the Home for the Colored Aged, the medical facility occupied numerous sites in Manhattan in the 19th century. The hospital trustees purchased a large plot of land in the semi-rural Bronx for a new building in 1895. The new complex was dedicated in 1899 and renamed Lincoln Hospital for the assassinated president. While originally founded as a facility for African Americans, the new Bronx building functioned a general hospital. In 1925 the hospital came under the control of the city's Department of Public Welfare. During the Depression, a number of painters including Ruth Egri (“Disease, Cure and Prevention”), Eric Mose (name unknown), and Albert Kelly ("The Circus Parade") created murals for the hospital under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. By the 1960s the hospital was in shambles and no longer sufficiently providing for the needs of the economically depressed communities. At least twice the hospital was occupied. First in 1969 150 members of the staff occupied the hospital's mental health center for two weeks in a "work in" and demanding improved services. In 1970 the leftist activist group Young Lords took over the hospital for 12 hours to bring attention to the deplorable conditions. A new Lincoln Hospital was erected in 1976 a few blocks away and the Southern Boulevard site was largely abandoned. It was demolished sometime after 1976 (though the exact date is fuzzy) and the WPA murals were lost.