Phil Greitzer/New York Daily News Archive, via Getty Images
Principal Angel Ayón was quoted in the Columbia Daily Spectator about the impending demolition of the former Harlem Hospital Women’s Pavilion, which holds notable historic significance as the medical facility where Martin Luther King Jr. was rushed to and treated for a stab wound in 1958.
New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation plans to turn the site into an all-new community health lab, with no preservation of the original building, which could have been adaptively reused to accommodate the needed services. “There is no reason anyone would have to argue that these new services are incompatible with the existing building,” Ayón said. “Of course that building could have been saved for labs and for whatever else is required. I see no reason why this wouldn’t have been done.”
Ayón further noted that the existing building is structurally sound, and likely could have been preserved, even added to for increased capacity, at less cost than taking it down and rebuilding on the site. Referring to the slow demolition process, Ayón added, “This is slow dying. This is not ‘I’m going to kill you at once.’ This is ‘I’m going to let you bleed and watch you die.’ That’s really what it is, and that is just a way to add insult to injury in the middle of what has been happening in Harlem for too many years—where there’s been a significant amount of lack of investment and meaningful protections.”
According to the article, CB10 has formally rejected the rezoning proposal of the Women’s Pavilion site, and several community activists and groups are still working to save it.