St. Vincent's

O'Toole Building, St. Vincent's Hospital, May 2009.

The NY Times reports this morning that the board of 160-year-old St. Vincent's Hospital in the Village has voted to shut the facility in the next few months, due to longstanding financial problems.

St. Vincent's has a long and deep presence in the city's fabric. It does for me as well, but in a tangential way. I walk by it often, and these words are never far from mind:

We were very tired, we were very merry --
We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable --
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry --
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

The poem is of course "Recuerdo," by Edna St. Vincent Millay, named after the hospital of her birth.

I first lived in New York in the summer of 1994, spending two sweltering months in a tiny sub-subletted room (with a view of the air-shaft and toilets down the hall) at the Chelsea Hotel. I nonetheless quickly fell in love with the city, finding a home for the first time. And I will always remember my first ride on the Staten Island ferry. The glorious feeling of simply being alive. The gratitude for the gift of this city. The joy of consciousness itself.

RIP, St. Vincent's.