Part 10-2. The Temporary Hospitals of the 1832 Pandemic

Note: The black numbers are the New York City ward districts.

When cholera struck New York, many wealthy residents fled, as did some private physicians. The growing number of patients overwhelmed the Bellevue Almshouse. In response, city officials converted schools and other structures into emergency cholera hospitals.

1. Park Hospital and 2. Sixth Ward Hospital

Within City Hall Park, Park Hospital was one of the first to open and treated large numbers of cholera victims because of its central location. The Sixth Ward Hospital on Duane Street served the overpopulated Five Points neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest districts.

3. Corlears Hook Hospital

Along the East River waterfront, Corlears Hook Hospital cared for dockworkers, shipbuilders, sailors, and other waterfront laborers. At its main point of entry into the city, it tried to intercept and treat sick passengers arriving by ship before the disease could spread.

4. Rivington Street Hospital

Many Lower East Side infected residents, in the final stages of the disease, overwhelmed the Rivington Hospital. It later became well known because artists documenting the epidemic there produced sketches of the suffering cholera victims.

5. Crosby Street Hospital

Housed in a converted medical college building near Broadway, Crosby Street Hospital became known for its experimental and often harsh treatments. Physicians employed bloodletting, calomel (a mercury-based compound), and even nitrous oxide gas in desperate attempts to combat the disease.

6. Mystery Hospital

They couldn’t name the hospital because it didn’t yet have an address. It occupied a constructed block of stables. Like the Crosby Street Hospital, it absorbed the overflow of Five Points’s cases.

7. Ninth Ward Hospital

This hospital served northern Greenwich Village. People considered the area healthier and less crowded than the regions farther south downtown.

Of the 3,515 New Yorkers who died during the epidemic, one-third of reported cases originated from the Five Points district in the Sixth Ward.