The New York Foundling history

The construction of the buildings on the property bounded by 68th and 69th Streets and by Lexington and Third Avenues was begun in 1872.

The Foundling began boarding babies with volunteer families almost immediately and initiated adoptions in 1873.

For decades, it sheltered unmarried expectant mothers and their babies, and it established a pediatric hospital in 1881.

And stark tragedy marked an 1882 note accompanying a quartet of babies conveyed to the Foundling by the commissioners of emigration on Wards Island, “The mothers of three of these children died of puerperal fever, and the fourth mother is hopelessly insane.”

In 1910, St Joseph By The Sea, at Huguenot, Staten Island, was opened as an annex to the New York foundling Hospital.

Although originally planned only for mother’s care by the Sisters, St Anne’s was opened in 1915 to outside physicians who wished to send private patients for confinement.

In 1930, a Social Service Department was established in order to provide casework services for unmarried mothers cared for in the Shelter.

In 1944, the Hospital service of St John’s was discontinued in order to expand and improve services to well children in need of care away from their own homes and thus meet an urgent need in this community.

In 1958, it moved to 1175 Third Avenue, where the Foundling stayed for 30 years before moving to its current headquarters at 590 Avenue of the Americas, at 17th Street.

Baccaglini, the director, said of the school, which could open as early as 2008.