Bellevue Hospital, New York City: women patients (mentally ill?) having a meal in a ward, with three nurses. Photograph.

Bellevue Hospital is now (2001) a large medical centre with a medical school in New York City's Lower East Side, facing the East River. Much of its old complex of buildings is currently still standing, albeit overshadowed by a twenty-storey block built in the 1970s. The hospital started as an infirmary for soldiers and slaves established by Jacob Varrenvanger in 1658. Clinical instruction was started in Bellevue Hospital in 1847, and in 1861 Bellevue Hospital Medical College was built in the hospital grounds. In 1898 the college became a part of New York University under the name of University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College. The present group of photographs shows the institution either shortly before or shortly after the merger of the hospital's medical school with the university. They show the buildings in their urban setting on one side, and against the busy harbour on the river side