VBMC History: Home

A modest archival collection is maintained on the history of Vassar Brothers Medical Center, formerly known as Vassar Brothers Hospital.  Items of interest include the original Board meeting minutes from 1884-1924, original accounting ledger from 1887-1900, hundreds of photographs, medical items, and School of Nursing transcriptions and yearbooks. 

Send an inquiry via e-mail, or call 845-437-3121.  Open to history students and historians by appointment.

1887 1950

1987

Opening of the Hospital - April 11, 1887

Structures built after the main hospital -- Horse barn and perimeter stone wall

Employees -- 1 head nurse, 2 bedside nurses, 1 cook, 1 gardener, 1 maintenance man, 1 supervisor

Ambulance -- 1892 - one-horse carriage with lamp; to be used for hospital patient transport; purchase price = $550

Library --  4,000 volumes purchased from an MD's private collection in Sing-Sing, Westchester Cty; called "The Fisher Library"

Library/Board Room and Nursing Residence building [Home I] -- 1897

First major building addition -- Corridors 1-4 for patient care, surgery, x-ray, laboratory and medical records, 1924

• First patient admitted on April 23, 1887
• Two nurses receive certificates of nursing - 1890
• Four-story corridor addition - 1924
• Mary Tower Memorial Home - 1934
• Modern Kitchen - 1940
• Joseph T. Tower Memorial School and Home - 1949
• Community Circle - 1950
• Coronary Care Unit - 1968
• South Circle - 1968
  
• Center for Radiation Oncology - 1974
• Head and Full Body CT Scanner - 1977
• Intensive Care Unit - June 1982
• Respiratory Care Unit - November 1986
• Neonatal Intensive Care Unit - January, 1992
• Open Heart Surgery - April 2000
• Dyson Center for Cancer Care - December 2001
• Name change from Hospital to Medical Center - June 2002
• High Risk Pregnancy Center - December 2008
• Aronzon Center for Ambulatory Surgery - May 2012
• Level II Trauma  - March 2016
• Groundbreaking for new patient pavilion - September 2016

Chef Roble was interviewed by Katie on 4/15/14 The Katie Show.  He spoke of his grandfather's legacy and showed a photo of his grandfather as a chef in the kitchen of Vassar Brothers Hospital in the 1960s. 

Photo at left - image from HRVH

Photo at right - Chef Roble & Katie Couric, with Chef Harris in background image

View the clip from The Katie Show below: