New York Methodist Celebrates 125 Years

Dec 13, 2006

Did you know that New York Methodist Hospital was founded two years before the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge?

Or that it was the first Methodist hospital in the world?

Or that the sole survivor of the 1960 United Air Lines plane crash in Park Slope was treated at NYM? (The ten-year-old boy later succumbed to his injuries.)

As part of its year long 125th anniversary celebration, New York Methodist Hospital has recently published an illustrated book and mounted an exhibit - both of which tell the history of NYM within the context of Park Slope and Brooklyn. Earlier this year a DVD about the Hospital's history - narrated by Pete Hamill - was produced.

The written history and the exhibition, both entitled Sharing Your Past, Caring for Your Future, are illustrated with many archival photos - some never before published. Both also feature sidebars on the 1960 United Air Lines jet that crashed in Park Slope, killing five on the ground and all but one in the aircraft. (The young boy who initially survived the crash died at the Hospital the next day. The outpouring of donations following his death was used as seed money to create NYM's pediatric intensive care unit.) The written history also includes a timeline of Brooklyn and hospital history from 1881 to the present.

The exhibit, located in the Hospital's Carrington Pavilion, 506 Sixth Street, is open to the public. The illustrated history and the DVD are available to members of the community who call the Department of Public Affairs at 718-780-5367, while supplies last.

Doctors and nurses, c. 1919, hold newborns in the maternity ward nursery.

Doctors and nurses, c. 1919, hold newborns in the maternity ward nursery. Within a few decades, New York Methodist Hospital would become known as "The Baby Hospital," because of its large number of births.

The Methodist Episcopal Hospital's Training School for Nurses, class of 1918.

The Methodist Episcopal Hospital's Training School for Nurses, class of 1918. Some 2,700 nurses graduated from the school during its 83-year existence.