Speyer Legacy School (New York City, New York)

 school, interesting place

The Syms Operating Theater was built in 1890, and was the most state of the art facility of its kind in the country. It was designed to be an aseptic operating pavilion for Roosevelt Hospital, and was built at the bequest of William J. Syms, a prominent New York gun maker. Syms commissioned architect William Wheeler Smith and surgeon Dr. Charles McBurney to build it. McBurney was to have full control of the pavilion’s features, and toured Europe visiting all of the state of the art operating rooms. The result was a building with clean rooms and no porous surfaces, with an amphitheater that could seat 300.

McBurney was renowned for his work with the appendix, and discovered the diagnostic spot on the torso for appendicitis which is still known as McBurney’s point. Additionally, he was called to treat president McKinley after he was shot. The operating theater would remain in operation until 1941 when it became the hospital mortuary. Portions of it were torn down in the 50s for the construction of a large tower behind it.

The 3-story Romanesque landmark building incorporated into the One Columbus Place complex at the northeast corner was completed in 1892. Designed by W. Wheeler Smith for the neighboring Roosevelt Hospital, the William J. Syms Operating Theater was the most advanced operating theater in the world when it opened and one of the first equipped for aseptic surgery. Besides the surgical amphitheater, the focal point of the building, the structure also included visitors' rooms, recovery rooms, living quarters for nurses and assistant surgeons, a decorated private chief surgeon's room, laboratory rooms, rooms for photography and microscopes, two small operating rooms, surgeons' rooms, an ether room, and various preparation rooms. The operating arena was clad in Italian marble and could accommodate 184 students. The glass dome, 40 feet above the floor, provided natural lighting.

The last surgery was performed in the Syms building in 1941; it was used as a blood bank and mortuary for six years, then in 1948 became a temporary emergency room. In 1953, the rear 17 feet of the building were removed to make way for an expansion of the hospital, and portions of the conical skylights were covered with copper. The building was converted into office space for the Department of Pathology, and was later used by George Soros's Open Society Institute, and since 2013 has housed part of The Speyer Legacy School.

The building is set back on its two street fronts behind narrow planted strips which are bordered along the sidewalk by an iron fence on a granite base with granite capped brick posts. In its massing the building consists of a central block with an elongated semi-conical roof, 1-story wings on either side, a narrow 3-story L-shaped wing adjacent to the central block on the south and west sides, and a square air intake tower adjacent to the west side of this wing above the 1-story wing.

The walls, with curved corners, are clad in red brick of two types, each laid in the same plane in Flemish bond and differentiated by their finish: smooth and evenly colored around windows and corners, rough and varicolored between windows. The smooth brick framing was in a form suggesting quoins creating 2-story bays at the basement and ground-floor levels. Windows have granite sills and lintels and occasional granite mullions in wider windows, sometimes with egg-and-dart moldings or block modillions of terra-cotta.

The ground floor along the avenue has four bays, with two double-windows flanked by single-windows, all with iron grilles, above basement windows. On 60th Street, the building is entered through a large rounded arch of glazed brick which is reached by a short flight of stairs; the entrance has paneled wood-and-glass double-doors and matching sidelights. To the left is a bay of double-windows and a single-window bay, above basement windows. To the right are two bays of single-windows (the western one where the 1-story section begins), followed by a double-window and another single-window. Above the entrance arch, at the 2nd floor, is a granite panel with raised letters saying "The Wm. J. Syms Operating Theater of the Roosevelt Hospital, 1891". There is a double-window to either side of this panel.

The various roof lines are marked by brick corbels surmounted by double stone bands framing brick parapets. The roof, whose distinctive form signals the amphitheater below, is crowned by a decorative iron finial in the form of a caduceus surmounted by a fleur-de-lis, and is clad in two tiers of skylights across the front, slate shingles on the sides, and tin flashing. The roof is pierced by a large unadorned chimney in either flank, above the back wall of the amphitheater, and a massive exhaust chimney behind the amphitheater with a Romanesque corbelled cornice. A small 3rd-floor section is visible behind and to the right of the dome.

The base of One Columbus Place now also houses The Speyer Legacy School, a private, independent school founded in 2009 that serves nearly 300 accelerated learners in grades K-8. It carries on the mission established by The Speyer School in New York City in the 1930s – an experimental public school with a curriculum designed to meet the educational and social emotional needs of gifted children. The school moved to this location in 2013 from its previous smaller quarters at 15 West 86th Street, and uses the address of 925 Ninth Avenue.