New digital collections are now online - annual reports of the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary, 1905-1932 and the New York Infant Asylum, 1872-1908

"P-04929" The photograph shows the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary building which was located at 327 E. 60th Street, between First and Second Avenues.

The annual reports of two antecedent institutions of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center that eventually merged into the hospital and medical center have been digitized and are now accessible online via the Internet Archive. The digitization was made possible from a Digital Conversion MicroGrant from the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO).

The Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary was incorporated in 1901 and the first patients were admitted to the newly constructed building on February 16, 1905. When it opened the building had 35 beds, 5 of which were reserved for private patients; the remainder of the beds were for "charity" patients. Besides the private rooms and patient wards, the five-story building included a laboratory, a nursery, a student's dormitory, an amphitheater, and a tiled roof patio (you can view the floor plans in the annual reports). According the the institution's first annual report, the purpose of the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary was to "render help to all those in need at the time of confinement, irrespective of creed, nationality, or color." The institution also had a training school for nurses. In addition to their classes and lectures, the nursing students attended the Cornell University Clinics held at the hospital. In 1932, the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary merged into New York Hospital to form the Pediatrics Department.

The New York Infant Asylum was chartered in 1865 for the purpose of caring for abandoned, orphaned, or unwanted children or children whose parent/parents could not care for them due to poverty or other reasons. "A statement preceding the annual report from 1872 claims that between 2,500 to 3,000 children were born out of wedlock in New York City in 1870. The first location of the Asylum was located at West 106th Street in Manhattan. In 1871, the New York Infant Asylum moved to a new location at 24 Clinton Place and there it added a lying-in department (an old term for a place for childbirth) and childcare training for mothers. In 1872, the Asylum opened a Country Home in Flushing, Queens, N.Y. and then another home in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. The Asylum took care of the children until the parent/s could care for them, arranged for adoptions, or cared for them until they were adults. In 1899, the New York Asylum for Lying-In Women was absorbed into the lying-in department of New York Infant Asylum. In 1909, the New York Infant Asylum and the Nursery and Child's Hospital consolidated to form New York Nursery and Child's Hospital, which became part of New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center (now NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center) in 1934. Whew.

The annual reports provide information about the institutions and the services they provided. Medical reports, medical statistics, demographic information, information regarding training of medical professionals, donation and membership lists, and lists of medical and house staff are usually included in the reports. A helpful way to access our digital collections on the Internet Archive is to browse by subject/keywords. Up next for digitization are the annual reports of the Nursery and Child's Hospital and the New York Nursery and Child's Hospital.