NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital history

After the ward building was destroyed by fire in 1889, two new ones were built with a total of 349 beds.

The administration building was rebuilt in 1891 to serve outpatients, among other uses.

A nursing school was established in 1892.

In 1922 Edward Harkness and his mother, Mrs.

Photographs show that the smokestack was not finished, perhaps not even started, in 1930, so the design could easily have been altered, then or later.

In 1932 it opened a broad new campus at 68th Street and the East River, with a central tower rising in an upward cascade of almost-white masonry, Gothic arches and intricate brickwork 350 feet high.

A building for an institute for ophthalmology opened in 1933.

According to a 1938 article in The New Yorker, calls from “indignant anti-Nazis” came in almost immediately, but the hospital protested that the $1,000 it would cost to remove the symbols would be better spent on patient care.

A city cancer hospital opened in 1950 and the New York Orthopaedical Hospital moved to the medical center the same year.

When Doctor Samuel Skinner became chief executive of New York Hospital in 1987, the institution was losing about $1 million a week.

Completed at a cost of about $100 million, it opened in 1988.

An administrative reorganization, cost cutting, and higher reimbursement rates from the state cut Presbyterian's losses in 1990.

1991: Milstein Pavilion replaces the main Columbia-Presbyterian building.

Merger negotiations between the two began in 1993 with the aim of saving $60 million by consolidating services.

After eliminating 150 more positions in 1995, which helped reduce the operating budget by 10 percent, New York Hospital recorded a profit of $13 million for the year.

New York Hospital's Greenberg Pavilion was completed in 1997 at a cost of $810 million.

Pardes pledged to reconstitute the management team, boost efficiency, cooperation, and productivity, and make the institution friendly for patients and their families and congenial for doctors. It had been assumed that Speck would succeed Skinner as chief executive of the corporation when he stepped down in 1999, but as concern grew over the corporation's financial performance, board members questioned whether Speck's personality and managerial skills made him an appropriate choice.

In 2002 NewYork-Presbyterian won long-sought-after approval to build a $250 million biomedical research and cancer-treatment center on its White Plains campus.