Jews’ Hospital in New York. Admission Ticket to Banquet & Ball.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

(New York)

1860

Printed with manuscript entry, for the admission of “Henry Nathan with Lady.” With bold image of “Jews Hospital.”

Likely the first image of this celebrated hospital. Jews’ Hospital (later famously renamed as Mount Sinai Hospital) was founded in 1852 by Sampson Simson (1780-1857) to address the needs of New York’s rapidly growing Jewish community. At the time, New York City hospitals often discriminated against Jews - refusing them treatment as patients as well as blocking the hiring of Jewish medical staff. The Jews’ Hospital in the City of New York, as it was initially called, inaugurated its first building in 1855, in what was then a rural neighborhood on West 28th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues on land donated by Simson. Just a short few years later the 45-bed hospital would be unexpectedly filled to capacity with soldiers wounded in the U.S. Civil War. In 1866 it was renamed Mount Sinai Hospital. See T. Levitan, Islands of Compassion: A History of the Jewish Hospitals of New York (1964).