{"id":12627,"date":"2017-09-20T11:00:33","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T15:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=12627"},"modified":"2024-12-12T13:18:41","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T18:18:41","slug":"lenox-hill-hospitals-modernization-captured-in-photographs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2017\/09\/20\/lenox-hill-hospitals-modernization-captured-in-photographs\/","title":{"rendered":"Lenox Hill Hospital’s Modernization Captured in Photographs"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ginny A. Roth
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\"A<\/a>
Charles R. Lachman Community Health Center at Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City, ca. 1966. Photograph by Irving Kaufman Studios.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Charles R. Lachman Community Health Center at Lenox Hill Hospital<\/a> was officially dedicated on September 20, 1966. During the ceremony a photograph album was presented to Mr. Lachman containing 32 black and white photographs providing a visual tour of Lenox Hill Hospital’s modernization, including the community center’s building progress, and before and after pictures of Lenox Hill Hospital’s many upgraded facilities, equipment, and wards. The album was also significant for showcasing the photographs of an early fine art medical photographer, Dionora Niccolini,<\/a> who would eventually found the hospital’s medical photography department where the album was created.<\/p>\n

\"Presented<\/a>
Gilt-lettered dedication on album cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today this unique album resides in the National Library of Medicine’s historical prints and photographs collection.<\/p>\n

The Lenox Hill Hospital, located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, has a nearly 160 year history of providing healthcare, and serves as a teaching hospital for The Zucker School of Medicine Hofstra\/Northwell<\/a> (known as the “Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine” up until August 2017). The hospital was founded in lower Manhattan as the “German Dispensary” in 1857. Its name was derived from the fact that the majority of patients the hospital served lived in a nearby immigrant neighborhood in the Lower East Side of Manhattan called “Little Germany<\/a>.” Due to the rapid increase of patients, the hospital moved several times and finally settled in its current location in 1905.\u00a0 The name of the hospital changed to “Lenox Hill” in 1918<\/a>, the name of the Upper East Side neighborhood<\/a> in which the hospital resides, in order to distance itself from Germany during World War I.<\/p>\n

Over the next several decades, the hospital continued to make advancements to the facilities and to the healthcare offered to patients. In 1933 the hospital established a maternity service, opened a cancer clinic, and made final preparations for the debut of its heart clinic. Lenox Hill opened one of the first intensive care units in Manhattan in 1957, followed 10 years later by the city’s first cardiac care unit.<\/p>\n

The photograph album captures the development and modernization of Lenox Hill Hospital up to 1966.\u00a0 Provided here are several “before and after” photographs of some of the Lenox Hill facilities.<\/p>\n