Vanessa Haney

St. Vincent’s Hospital: The O’Toole Building (selected)

I worked at St. Vincent’s Infectious Disease Clinic (IDC), the hospital’s HIV clinic, from early 2006 through the hospital's bankruptcy and abrupt closure in spring 2010. The IDC was housed in the O’Toole Building, Albert Ledner’s mid-century modernist structure built as the headquarters for the National Maritime Union. In the 1960s, the union’s executive suite occupied the 6th floor, whose décor represented the ecological vanguard of office interiors: porthole-shaped skylights, plants growing along the walls, sea green carpeting and tiles, and a garden with a brook.

In the mid-1970s, after St Vincent’s purchased the building, a stripped-down 6th floor became home to its outpatient mental health program. When I worked there, HIV grand rounds and research meetings were also held on this floor.

After the hospital was shut down, in a deal brokered by New York City and State to try to appease community members, parts of the O’Toole building were repurposed into an urgent care facility, as the rest of St. Vincent’s was converted to luxury condominiums.

During the slow dismantling of the hospital, I photographed the 6th floor.