Greenwich Village History #1 is my first of what I plan to make a series of caches with bits and pieces of the history of Greenwich Village.
While you admire this beautiful pre-war residential building on West 12th Street in the West Village. Constructed in 1910, this six-story building features 105 units and showcases the ornate detailing and symmetrical façade characteristic of the Beaux-Arts architectural style. The building's decorative elements around the windows and entrance add to its timeless charm, making it a notable presence in this historic neighborhood.
History - Across the street from these charming buildings once lived St. Vincent’s Hospital of Manhattan. Which was a beacon in Greenwich Village, serving poets, writers, artists, winos, the poor and the working-class and gay people. While the buildings still stand, they were gutted/renovated and are now residential condiminiums.
St. Vincent's dedicated staff treated victims of calamities: the cholera epidemic of 1849, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, the 2001 9/11 attack and in 2009, the Hudson River landing of US Airways Flight 1549. Notably, St. Vincent's was also the epicenter of New York City's AIDS epidemic. It housed the first and largest AIDS ward on the east coast and is often referred to as the "ground zero" of the AIDS epidemic.[As one of the first institutions to address and treat HIV and AIDS in the 1980s, St. Vincent's HIV Center was one of the oldest, most experienced and most renowned HIV treatment programs in the US. It provided coordinated outpatient and inpatient primary care and case management services to HIV-positive adults, pregnant women, and children, and also provided HIV prevention services, AIDS education programs, HIV clinical research, and support groups.
After 161 years of service, the hospital was shut down on 4/30/2010 due to severe financial troubles, including over $1 billion dollars in debt.
Leaving Greenwich Village and it's residents wihout a hospital and only the shell of what used to be.