St. Barnabas Hospital, Home for Incurables, 1932

The hospital is the oldest care facility in New York City. Established after the end of the Civil War in 1866, the hospital was one of the first homes for people with chronic diseases or mental illnesses. These people could not be treated in a regular hospital due to risk of infection from other contagious diseases, like pneumonia or tuberculosis. St. Barnabas Hospital for Incurables (later renamed St. Barnabas Hospital for Chronic Diseases) moved from its original location to its current, much larger site in 1874, in order to accommodate more patients.

A third of the hospital’s patients were treated without charge, so the institution received sponsorship from high-profile donors, including Cornelius Vanderbilt and Theodore Roosevelt.

The hospital continued its expansion intermittently from 1926 through 2015, adding more beds, facilities, programs, and residential areas.