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Plans for the first new mental hospital to be built by the state in 25 years were revealed when Governor Averell Harriman inspected a model of the institution placed on view at the State Office Building. The $70,000,000 institution, to accommodate 3,000 patients, will be located in New York City in the Bronx, adjacent to the Albert Einstein Medical Center, the East Bronx General Hospital, and the East Bronx Tuberculosis Hospital.
The 125-acre site along the Hutchinson River Parkway, now a marshy waste, has been acquired by the state and is being ballasted, consolidated, filled and graded in preparation for construction.
“The new hospital,” the Governor said, “is intended to reduce overcrowding in existing hospitals in the metropolitan area. Its urban location is in line with today's philosophy of establishing mental hospitals in the population center, where both professional and nonprofessional staff is readily available, visitors have easy access, and the institution can operate as a psychiatric center for the community.”
According to operating plans outlined by Dr. Paul H. Hoch, Commissioner of Mental Hygiene, the hospital will serve the Bronx and its residents, providing both inpatient and outpatient care, including the new day hospital type of service, where patients spend the day participating in a regular therapeutic program and return to their homes at night. An aftercare clinic for patients who have left state hospitals is already in operation in the Bronx for residents of the borough.
Dr. Hoch said that the hospital will work in cooperation with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, providing for the college resources for psychiatric teaching material and availing itself of the consultant services offered by the school's highly qualified specialists. The availability of such specialists in all medical branches, he said, guarantees good general medical and surgical care of patients. The hospital will be staffed with its own full time psychiatrists.