Montefiore Home, ca. 1910.

Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids was established in 1884 as a 25-bed facility on 84th Street and York Avenue. Named for a British Jewish philanthropist, the facility was moved to a larger building in 1888 on 138th Street, before finally settling in a new structure here at Gun Hill Road in the Bronx in 1912. The move to the more rural Bronx allowed for more outdoor space for the tubercular patients. In the early 20th century the hospital became the largest privately supported hospital for the chronically ill in the world. In the second half of the 20th century the hospital grew beyond caring only for the elderly and chronically ill, becoming a major medical center, that by the 1980s trained more physicians than any other American facility. The original building was demolished in the mid 1980s for a new eight-story structure.