The Smallpox Hospital
A Meaningful COVID-19 Memorial
Digital Rendering Courtesy Synoesis Visualization Studio, synoesis.com
Memorial design Competition announcement forthcoming
A Fitting Memorial Site
Roosevelt Island, New York City
Courtesy Touhey Photography, metouhey.com
The Smallpox Hospital is uniquely meaningful site for a COVID-19 memorial. It is immediately accessible from all of New York’s boroughs, including many New York neighborhoods hardest hit by the disease. If permanently stabilized and landscaped for public access, its waterfront tranquility and historic relevance promise a place to remember those we have lost.
Location
The Ruin sits on Roosevelt Island, south of Cornell Technion and immediately north of FDR Four Freedoms State Park. It is within the shadow of the United Nations and World Health Organization.
A Landmark’s History
Designed by renowned architect James Renwick, Jr., the building once served as a hospital for a devastating pandemic and as a nursing school for the frontlines. It is hard to imagine a more fitting site to memorialize those we lost to COVID-19 as well as scientific advances and the frontline workers fighting viral and infectious disease.
The gothic structure is our country’s only landmark ruin. It is registered as a federal, state and city landmark.
Accessibility
The Ruin is easily accessible from three international airports, as well as Manhattan and Queens. Major transportation options also include tram, subway, ferry, bus, and car.
A Garden Among Ruins: Space for Reflection
Digital Rendering Courtesy Synoesis Visualization Studio, synoesis.com
Today, the interior of the Ruin has no roof or floor slabs. Sunlit, open interiors allow for a sensitive landscape, art, or architectural intervention to honor our scientist, heroes and those we have lost. Once completed, the proposed memorial will be free and open to the public year-round.
Donate
It is the generosity of people like you that will breathe life into this magnificent Ruin to create a place of reflection and memorialization for years to come. Your tax-deductible gift makes everything possible. Please contribute to our efforts here.
Courtesy Touhey Photography, metouhey.com
Learn More
Not only did the Smallpox Hospital serve as a site of quarantine for a devastating disease, it was also a nursing school training New York’s frontlines for over sixty years. Learn more about this rich history.
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About Us
The mission of Friends of the Ruin is to excite interest in the cultural value of New York City’s historic Smallpox Hospital; engage the public in dialogue about its potential for adaptive reuse as open space; and raise essential funds to complete a restoration.
Friends of the Ruin is a registered 501 (c) 3 tax exempt organization.
Board of Directors
Hansel Arroyo, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist trained at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital.
Robert (Bob) Balder serves as the executive director of the Cornell Architecture Art Planning Program.
William (Jeff) Black is the managing director of Cantaro Capital.
Betty Chen is the managing director of investments at Rockefeller University.
Stephen Martin is an architect and former director of design and planning for Four Freedoms Park Conservancy.
Pamela Poland Chen, Esq. is partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
Jonathan Salk, MD is a psychiatrist and co-author with his late father, Jonas Salk, MD, of the 1981 book, “A New Reality.”
Toks Sotande-Peters is a director in the International Corporate Bank for Barclays.