Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. It is located in East Harlem in the New York City borough of Manhattan, on the eastern border of Central Park stretching along Madison and Fifth Avenues, between East 98th Street and East 103rd Street. The entire Mount Sinai health system has over 7,400 physicians, as well as 3,919 beds, and delivers over 16,000 babies a year. In 2023, the hospital was ranked 23rd among over 2,300 hospitals in the world and the best hospital in New York state by Newsweek. Adjacent to the hospital is the Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital which provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21 throughout the region.
History
At the time of the founding of the hospital in 1852, other hospitals in New York City discriminated against Jewish people both by not hiring them to treat patients, and by prohibiting them from being treated in the hospitals' wards. Orthodox Jewish philanthropist Sampson Simson (1780–1857) founded the hospital to address the needs of New York City's rapidly growing Jewish immigrant community. It was the second Jewish hospital in the United States, after the Jewish Hospital, located in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was established in 1847.
, as it was called until adopting its current name in 1866, was built on West 28th Street in Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, on land donated by Simson. It opened two years before Simson's death. Four years later, it was unexpectedly filled to capacity with soldiers injured in the American Civil War.
The Jews' Hospital felt the effects of the escalating Civil War in other ways, as staff doctors and board members were called into service. Dr. Israel Moses served four years as lieutenant colonel in the 72nd New York Infantry Regiment; Joseph Seligman had to resign as a member of the board of directors, as he was increasingly called upon by President Lincoln for advice on the country's growing financial crisis.
The New York Draft Riots of 1863 also strained the hospital's resources, as it struggled to tend to the many wounded.
More and more, the Jews' Hospital was finding itself an integral part of the general community. In 1866, to reflect this new-found role, it changed its name. In 1872, the hospital moved uptown to the east side of Lexington Avenue, between East 66th and East 67th Streets.
20th century
Now called Mount Sinai Hospital, the institution forged relationships with many physicians who made contributions to medicine, including Henry N. Heineman, Frederick S. Mandelbaum, Bernard Sachs, Charles A. Elsberg, Emanuel Libman, and, most significantly, Abraham Jacobi, known as the father of American pediatrics and a champion of construction at the hospital's new site on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 1904.
The hospital established a school of nursing in 1881. Created by Alma deLeon Hendricks and a small group of women, Mount Sinai Hospital Training School for Nurses was taken over by the hospital in 1895. In 1923, its name was changed to Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing. This school closed in 1971 after graduating 4,700 women and one man in the last class. An active alumnae association continues. Since 2013, the nursing school of the Mount Sinai Health System has been Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing (PSON).
The early 20th century saw the population of New York City explode. That, coupled with many new discoveries at Mount Sinai (including significant advances in blood transfusions and the first endotracheal anesthesia apparatus), meant that Mount Sinai's pool of doctors and experts was in increasing demand. A $1.35 million ($ in current dollar terms) expansion of the 1904 hospital site raced to keep pace with demand. The opening of the new buildings was delayed by the advent of World War I. Mount Sinai responded to a request from the United States Army Medical Corps with the creation of Base Hospital No.3. This unit went to France in early 1918, and treated 9,127 patients with 172 deaths: 54 surgical and 118 medical, the latter due mainly to influenza and pneumonia.