Adaptations For Use

New York Hospital has a nice long history, dating back to a royal charter before the American Revolution. In 1932, after affiliation with the Cornell University Medical School and a number of other institutions, it moved to the building in the photo above, a skyscraper with a whole bunch of low-rise wings connected at the base. Over the years, new additions were built, particularly along York Avenue (the street on the left). The new building was designed by Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch, and Abbott in a variation on the corporate Art Deco that was popular at the time, except for some reason with gothic arches on the windows.

I took the picture below from the corner of 70th Street and York, at the far side of the tower in the old picture above.

You can see two of the original low wings on either side of the school bus, with a later extension filling in the next courtyard to the south/right. I want to focus on the north-facing wall of the southern of these two wings, just about dead center on the bus. Zoom in and we see this:

There a lot of round ducts coming somewhat awkwardly out of windows and snaking their way along the facade up to a large piece of rooftop equipment. It’s not the ugliest thing you’ll see on a building in New York, but it jumps out because the NYH campus is so well-maintained and this seems unplanned. What’s going on?

In the 86 years since this building was completed, hospitals may have seen bigger changes in their architectural and mechanical requirements than any other building type. A patient’s room in a modern hospital is a thin veneer of finishes over an enormous amount of mechanical services. The labs in hospitals have changed even more, with new requirements for clean rooms, temperature and humidity control, and electronic equipment. New hospitals are designed with significantly taller floor-to-floor heights and heavier floor loading than older ones to accommodate the equipment, duct, electrical conduit, and pipe. And there’s the origin of this awkward group of ducts: the original building was retrofit for modern hospital and lab use. There was literally nowhere to run duct for the new use on the inside, and tearing down the building wasn’t an option, so the duct runs up the outside.

I’ve said before that I believe the best form of preservation is keeping a building in use. Sometimes it looks a little funny, but it’s worth it.