The New York Hospital has always recognized the importance of training nurses. In 1799, Dr. Valentine Seaman founded a course of training for nurses, that continued until his death in 1817. In 1877, shortly after New York Hospital moved to West 15th Street, the New York Hospital Training School for Nurses was established. Upon joining the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in 1932, the name was changed to the New York Hospital School of Nursing. The school then became the Cornell University-New York Hospital School of Nursing, a unit of Cornell University, in 1942.
Many of the nursing school graduates quickly became national leaders in the field, including: Lilian Wald, founder of the Visiting Nurse Service, Irene Sutliffe, who played the leading role in making the nursing school a major force in American nursing, Clara Weeks, who wrote the first textbook by an American nurse, Anne W. Goodrich, who was the first dean of the Army School of Nursing and of Yale University School of Nursing, and Julia Stimson, chief nurse of the Red Cross Nursing Service in France during World War I, and Director of the Nursing Service of the American Expeditionary Force.
Unfortunately, after a brilliant period of 102 years, a withdrawal of New York State funding and inadequate financial support forced the nursing school to close in 1979.
The above history was revised and adapted from "History of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center", an article by Ralph Engle, Jr., M.D., that first appeared in the medical center's Directory of Alumni and Staff, 1980.
