The Polhemus Memorial Clinic in Brooklyn, New York was built in 1897 as an extension of a hospital for the poor on the corner of Henry and Amity streets. It was officially inaugurated January 5, 1898. Throughout most of its lifetime, 1897 to July 2008, it was part of the Long Island College Hospital

Long Island College Hospital

Long Island College Hospital is a teaching hospital situated at Hicks and Amity Streets in Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, New York.Founded in 1858, the hospital has 506 beds. In 1860 it introduced the practice of bedside teaching and it later became the first U.S. hospital to use stethoscopes...

 (LICH). Joseph Korom, the author of The American Skyscraper (2008), considers the eight-story tower to be the first skyscraper

Skyscraper

A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...

 hospital ever built. The clinic and adjacent row houses were designated part of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Cobble Hill is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, USA. Bordered by Atlantic Avenue on the north, Hicks Street to the west, Smith Street on the east and Degraw Street to the south, Cobble Hill sits adjacent to Boerum Hill and Brooklyn Heights with Carroll Gardens to the south...

 Historic District in 1988.

History

The Cobble Hill area of Brooklyn was settled by Europeans early in the seventeenth century and was included into the newly incorporated City of Brooklyn in 1834. Present-day street grid was designed in the same 1834 and by 1860 the former farmland was developed into a densely populated row house neighborhood with banks, churches and retail stores. Two row houses on the corner of Henry and Amity, later demolished to make way for the clinic, were built in 1853 by an Irish-American real estate developer Edward Wilson.

Construction of the building was financed by Caroline Herriman Polhemus (died 1906), who provided $400,000 to the Long Island College Hospital (LICH) in the memory of her husband Henry Ditmas Polhemus, who served as the Regent of LICH from 1872 until his death in 1895. Caroline Polhemus also donated a farm in Rockland County

Rockland County, New York

Rockland County is a suburban county 15 miles to the northwest of Manhattan and part of the New York City Metropolitan Area, in the U.S. state of New York. It is the southernmost county in New York west of the Hudson River, and the smallest county in New York outside of New York City. The...

 to the Brooklyn Children's Aid Society

Children's Aid Society

__notoc__The Children’s Aid Society is a private charitable organization based in New York City. It serves 150,000 children per year, providing foster care, medical and mental health services, and a wide range of educational, recreational and advocacy services through dozens of community centers,...

. In the summer of 1895 Caroline Polhemus purchased two corner row houses and demolished them. An architectural contest to design the clinic attracted six bids; a young architect, Marshall Emery, won first prize of $500. Construction commenced in spring of 1897 and was completed in December 1897. Emery described his building, finished in French Renaissance

French Renaissance

French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...

 motives, as "dignified and pleasing, at the same time having as strongly a marked, monumental and academic character as the peculiar arrangement of the interior will permit, while refraining from undue or lavish use of ornamentation". Emery consulted with physicians and surgeons to design a thoroughly modern hospital. Separate entrances on each facade separated the students from hospital patients and staff. The building functions were separated vertically; originally, Pohlemus Clinic housed:

• the hospital's dispensary
  Dispensary
  A dispensary is an office in a school, hospital or other organization that dispenses medications and medical supplies. In a traditional dispensary set-up a pharmacist dispenses medication as per prescription or order form....
  
   in the first two floors;
• administration and student locker rooms in the third floor;
• training classed in the fourth to seventh floors;
• and dissecting
  Dissection
  Dissection is usually the process of disassembling and observing something to determine its internal structure and as an aid to discerning the functions and relationships of its components....
  
   rooms of the Department of Anatomy in the eighth floor.

The clinic was equipped with an elevator, steam heating, forced ventilation, electrical generators and one of the first x-ray machine

X-ray machine

An X-ray generator is a device used to generate X-rays. These devices are commonly used by radiographers to acquire an x-ray image of the inside of an object but they are also used in sterilization or fluorescence....

s in existence. After the United States entry into World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Polhemus Clinic provided x-ray facilities to the United States Marines.

In July 2008 LICH closed and sold the Polhemus Building (then housing its departments of surgery and anaesthesia) and the maternity ward, citing the need to raise cash to escape bankruptcy. Doctors split over the decision, blaming Continuum Health Partners

Continuum Health Partners

Continuum Health Partners is a hospital network in New York City.It consists of:*Beth Israel Medical Center*St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center*New York Eye and Ear InfirmaryIt was formed initially in 1997 by Beth Israel and St. Luke's-Roosevelt...

for the mismanagement of Brooklyn hospitals.