Walking through Greenwich Village can feel like a walk through a 19th Century urban landscape. The Village was a farming area before the American Revolution, but it developed into one of the New York City’s important neighborhoods in the 1800s. A remainder of its medical care from 160 years ago still shows its presence even today.
The Northern Dispensary was built in 1831. It is a unique triangular three story brick building that has “always” been used for caring for the ill and financially disadvantaged.
On April 27, 1827 the Dispensary’s articles of incorporation were drawn up with Article 2 saying that the Dispensary was established “To furnish medicine and medical attendance gratuitously, to such of the inhabitants as may be proper objects of this charity…”
The Northern Dispensary treated ten to twenty thousand New Yorkers annually who were otherwise unable to afford medical care. Included was Edgar Allen Poe in 1837 according to local legend. Poe lived nearby at 137 Waverly Place. The number of patients seeking care grew so much by the 1850s that the building, originally two stories, had a third story added. The ill could receive outpatient care at the dispensary, but there were also beds for in-patient care.
The Northern Dispensary was used throughout the Civil War, the 1863 Draft Riots, and Reconstruction. Although it was not a military hospital, after the war veterans sought care here.
The building itself comes to a sharp point too narrow for even a single adult!
The building was unoccupied when I visited. In recent years, the organization God’s Love We Deliver has moved in to use it for its free food deliveries to the ill. The group was started during the AIDS crisis in the Village, and it now delivers throughout New York City for people suffering from a variety of illnesses.
The move was facilitated by a restriction in its original deed in the 1830s that the building only be used to serve the “poor and infirm.” The building was empty for two decades because of that requirement.
