Mount Sinai West Hospital (New York City, New York)

 hospital, 1992_construction, postmodern (architecture)

15-story postmodern hospital completed in 1992 as the Roosevelt Hospital. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it replaced the original hospital that was on the same block but faced 9th Avenue. Much of the original hospital, including the emergency room, was torn down to make way for two 49-story apartment buildings—One Columbus Place Tower I and II. Mount Sinai West was formerly known as Roosevelt Hospital, the original of which opened its first building in 1871. St. Luke's and Roosevelt hospitals merged in 1979 prior to the renaming of the hospital under the Mount Sinai health system (St. Luke's is located about 50 blocks away in Morningside Heights). The official names of both hospitals were changed in January 2014 to Mount Sinai St. Luke's and Mount Sinai West as two separate entities. On November 17, 2015, against the objection of the Roosevelt family, Mount Sinai Roosevelt was changed to Mount Sinai West, though is still locally referred to as Roosevelt Hospital. It is a full-service hospital with 505 beds.

The building is clad in orange brick, pre-cast concrete, and turquoise-colored glass. The main building tower is at the west end of the block, where brick north and south wings flank a center section that is recessed facing 10th Avenue above the 7th floor. There are three grand arches spanning the center section, rising nearly five stories high. Behind them is a north-south drive in front of the main entry doors. The ceiling is barrel-vaulted at each arch, with the spacious drive continuing through the north and south wings to 58th & 59th Streets. Behind the drive, at the recessed wall, there is glass-and-metal infill at the three great arches, with entrances through the base of the center arch into the towering lobby. The rear walls of the wings, behind the drive, are clad in brick, and each has a small service entrance. In front of the building, separating the drive from the avenue, is The Roosevelt Gardens, a strip of landscaping with benches and a walking path; it is split in the middle by a wide set of steps leading up and back to the main entrance.

Above the concrete arches, there is a row of nine square windows at the 6th floor; there are no openings in the center section at the 7th floor, above which there is a deep setback to the curtain wall of the upper floors, clad in turquoise glass panels with clear-glass square windows. The curtain wall is divided into a 3x3 grid by white metal mullions, with nine windows per floor. The lower three squares of the grid contain the 8th-10th floor, the middle three squares the 11th-13th floors, and the top three square the 14th & 15th floors (the top floor is spaced farther apart from the rest). Above this is a large mechanical penthouse level of pre-cast concrete with large vents. The glass curtain wall extends about halfway to the south along the side walls of the north and south wings that frame the set-back area, with a slight angle. Here they have bands of windows between the turqoise panels, instead of individual square windows. These side areas of the curtain stop just short of the roof lines on the brick-clad wings, while the main west-facing wall extends just above. At the north and south ends of the west facade, the brick wings each have a single bay of larger square windows beginning on the 6th floor. There are 3-story openings at the base, accessing the drive; these two openings are shorter than the three arches in the center. The corners of the wings are notched.

The north and south facades span five large, 3-story tall bays at the base, each with beveled brick edges. The western bay is open to the driveway. The other four bays have 3-story curtain walls with the same turquoise glass, clear windows and aluminum mullions, recessed back from the beveled edges. At each floor the window bands are organized as a square pane in the center flanked by two narrower panes on either side; the eastern bay is wider, with two square panes, and paired narrow panes in between and at the sides. Above, the 4th floor has 17 square, punched windows, with thin banding on the brick piers in between. The upper floors have larger square windows that are not recessed. On the 7th & 8th floor they are filled instead by metal louvers. There are winder windows on the top floor. The east end of the north and south wings of the main tower also has notched corners, and the east-facing elevations have a bay of square windows beginning on the 5th floor (there is a large metal vent below on the north wing). In between there is another glass curtain wall (this not not quite as far set back as on the west facade). From the south half of this projects a 12-story section clad in the same curtain wall on the north and south, that connects to the east part of the building. This connecting section has bands of windows between turquoise glass spandrels.

A 1-story pre-cast concrete base runs along 59th Street from the west tower to a 3-story mechanical housing at the east end that has large metal vents. There is a pharmacy near the east end of the ground floor, with glass doors and multiple storefront windows. Farther to the west are two wide garage bays for ambulances, and next to the west tower (in front of the set-back, curtain-walled connecting section) is the emergency entrance, with glass sliding doors.

Set back from the ground floor the east tower has another two stories of base, framed in orange brick, with pre-cast concrete piers dividing 17 narrow bays of single-windows; the spandrel panels between the 2nd & 3rd floors are painted brown, and this section is capped by a stone coping and metal railing. The 12-story east tower is set back closer to 58th Street, and is clad in orange brick on both the north and south sides. Bands of windows are divided into 11 bays of triple-windows by pale-green metal panels. The windows bands at the 3rd (south facade), 4th (north facade) & 7th floors do not extend all the way across the facade.

The 2-story base on 58th Street has service entrances near the west end (in front of the connecting section), at the middle are loading docks. A grey polished granite band runs along the base of the ground floor, and there is a small secondary entrance at the east end. The 2nd floor has 19 bays of single-windows, and a wide eastern end bay with a 4-over-2-pane window. A stone coping caps the base on this facade. A stairwell tower is set farther back at the east end of the south facade, with a bay of single-windows at its eastern edge.

www.mountsinai.org/locations/west