The Forgotten Past of New Jersey: December 2020

Of all the hospitals I've written about for this blog, I've never been more intimidated to tackle a story than I was for this one. Few places had as much of an impact on their community as Plainfield's historic Muhlenberg Hospital. The hospital was founded in 1876 after an incident where a man fell off a coal train and had to have his leg amputated on site. After this incident, locals declared the need for a hospital in the region. Dr. Charles Hart and the Reverend Erskine M. Rodman began making the thought a reality. They decided to name the facility after the Reverend William Agustus Muhlenberg, who had recently passed away. The reverend was best know for being the founder of the famed St Luke's Hospital in New York City. After disputes over the best location, the land for the new hospital in Plainfield was donated by Job Male, the first mayor of the city. After years of fundraising and building the hospital officially opens on December 1st, 1881.

"The Muhlenberg Hospital: Plainfield NJ H. Edwards Fieken and Charles H. Smith (1878)

The original hospital was a small, half timbered single story wooden structure on the western side of the city. The structure had gender segregated wings, offices up front, a kitchen and dining room in the back, and a surgical suite. Local women were credited with working to fundraise for the building. Minor improvements continued to be made over the years, including the introduction of steam heat and electricity in 1884. Members of the hospitals "auxiliary" were responsible for a large portion of the money for the upgrades. They didn't want to draw from the hospitals funds, in case an emergency were to occur. By 1894 a school of nursing formed at the hospital, as was common at the time. It is reported at the time that the staff of nine doctors performed their services without being paid. In 1895 the hospital purchases their first ambulance. Two years later a new wing added to the hospital designed by architect Evarts Tracy. Evarts was a Plainfield resident and employee of McKim, Mead, and White, who were one of the most prestigious American architecture firms of all time. They were responsible for New York City's famed original Penn Station.

Annual Report (1909)

By the turn of the century the hospital had outgrown itself. In 1901 a patch of farmland on Randolph Road was purchased after several local landowners came forward offering a place for the facility. Evarts Tracy and the newly formed Tracey and Swartwout firm designed a cluster of attractive brick and limestone structures at the end of Hillside Avenue which opened in 1903. The new complex included a reception building, kitchen, mens and women's dorms, even a maternity ward. 3/4 of the funds were raised by just 123 Plainfield residents. Evarts Tracy designed and built his home on Hillside within sight of the hospital so he could always admire his work. The hospital was one of the firm's major projects, but the duo would go on to be some of the most esteemed institutional architects of the age.

One of the most valuable parts of this new addition was the Muhlenberg Operating Pavilion. The new space was a breakthrough for the facility, offering a room built specifically to carry out surgical procedures. In fact, the structure was designed facing north, affording the most amount of natural light it could receive in a given day. Funding for this addition was provided largely through a $10,000 donation (~$300,000 in 2020) from a man named J. Howard Wright. The money was donated on behalf of Wright's two deceased grandsons, who each died of different infectious diseases at the turn of the century.

"Inside of the operating room" Seventy Sixth Annual report (1954)

"Main operating room- Wright Memorial Pavilion" Forty Third Annual Report (1921)

More and more structures were added to the campus over the years, in a mix of different architectural styles. An isolation building was completed in 1908.

"Contagious disease building" Annual Report (1917)

The next year the Hedgeman memorial power plant and laundry building opens. The building was a donation from Mr. Benjamin A Hegeman, Jr. And W. J. R. Hegeman. Shortly after being constructed it had already been outgrown.

Annual Report (1915)

Mrs. Winnie Edgerton donated $50,000 (~$1.3mil in 2020) to expand the maternity building. The stately Private Room building was added in 1916.

"Private Patients Pavilion" Forty Seventh Annual Report (1924)

The nurses building received an additional level in 1918 to accommodate the demand from the Council of National Defense as a result of WWI.

Annual Report (1913-1914)

Annual Report (1919)

The new power plant was also completed the same year. Several of the new sections of the hospital added throughout this time are the work of famed New York City hospital architecture firm Crow, Lewis, and Wick. The group has other extant works in New Jersey, including the Orange Memorial Hospital in nearby Essex County. Their style and flair are unmistakable.

Annual Report (1915)

The new Nurses Building opened in 1922, followed by the East Building four years later. By 1927 the new wing of the Private Pavilion opens, as well as the Ward building in 1928.

"Ward Building" Fifty First Annual Report, (1928)

"Private Patients' Pavilion" Fifty Second Annual Report (1929)

The hospital was taxed heavily during the Great Depression when a large portion of their patients were unable to pay for care. However they reportedly never turned a patient away during this time, and they didn't cut a single service.

"Fairfield Aerial Services Inc, NYC"

Fifty Third Annual Report (1930)

Potentially the most recognizable building on the campus was erected in 1939. The new Administration building was constructed right in front of the original Tracy and Swartwout structures.

Sixty Third Annual Report (1940)

Seventy Sixth Annual Report (1954)

WWII was period of strife for many hospitals, and Muhlenberg was no exception. Nearly half of the medical professionals at the hospital enlisted in the service and were sent overseas. The need for medical care didn't cease though, and the hospital was quickly outgrowing each addition. To remedy this, construction began on the "New Main" building designed by Ferrenz & Taylor in 1952. Ferrenz and Taylor had their own pedigree, both having met while working in the offices of John Russell Pope earlier in their careers.

Seventy Fourth Annual Report (1951)

Seventy Fourth Annual Report (1951)

The new structure rose up on the easternmost side of the complex. This was the largest building on campus, which had a number of new amenities. The top floor was one large surgical center, there were operating rooms on lower floors, and the basement had a huge pathology department with several different laboratories.

The building had new a new kitchen and cafeteria and hundreds of new patient rooms. There was also an expansive pathology laboratory throughout the basement, The new building fulfilled the hospitals space needs for the time being, It would be nearly two decades before any major expansion would take place at the facility. In 1957, Muhlenberg hired their first black nurse, a young woman named Corliss Henry.

In 1966 the Kenyon House, a new nurses home was built on the corner of Park Ave and Randolph Road, occupying what was once a driveway lined with Elm Trees donated by the city of Plainfield. The next year a portion of the original student nurses home was demolished to make room for parking, while a large t shaped structure called the Continuing Care Facility was built. The new building connected the remaining portion of the student building to the main hospital. The footprint of the complex now stretched nearly to the corner of Moffett and Park Avenue, and east all the way to the Blake tennis center.

In 1970 another huge construction campaign was launched. It started by expanding existing sections of the hospital but by 1974 a large new structure named the Stevens Building was completed behind the right wing of the New Main building.

The Stevens building contained a new emergency room entrance, as well as 5 additional stories of patient care space. The maternity ward was moved to the newly constructed wing.

In 1977 the hospital celebrated its 100th anniversary, and the next year Centennial Hall opened. The building was dedicated to the Women's Auxiliary, who fought tirelessly decade after decade for improvements to the facility. The small auditorium was added to the right wing of the New Main building, right along Randolph Road.

In 1979 the Arnold Schwartz Foundation donated $36,000 to help finance a children's center at the hospital. Sevens years later, the facility would go from being know as "Muhlenberg Hospital" to "Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center", a name more fitting to its actual level of service.

The last major building project began in 1987. It was dubbed the "Muhlenberg 2000" campaign. The goal was to raise $5 million, but they ended up with nearly $6.5 million. Ground was broken in haste for the Fitch building, named for Dr. Thomas S.P. Fitch who was a longtime resident of the hospital. Part of the East Building was demolished to make way for the new space. An atrium was also added to the New Main building.

The Fitch building opened in the early 1990s. Included in this section was a new emergency room and a massive surgical floor. There were 8 surgical suites, each equipped with all sorts of lighting and other useful apparatus.

"Thomas S. P. Fitch, M.D.," Annual Report (1958)

At this time the hospital reached its peak capacity with 355 patients on 17 acres. Muhlenberg is claimed to be the largest employer in the city at the time, with more than 1000 people keeping the facility running every day. Just a few years later in 1997 Muhlenberg merges with JFK hospital in Edison forming the Solaris Health Network.

In 2006 the Harold B. and Dorothy A. Synder School building was built on the property, right behind what remained of the original Students Building. Shortly after construction wrapped up, the Students Building and Continuing Care Facility were demolished.

The community was delivered a heavy blow when it was announced in 2008 that the beloved hospital center was slated to be shuttered. As always, operating expenses were cited as the reason for the closure. Hundreds of people attended a protest on the day the hospital officially shut its doors. They didn't just turn the key and walk away though; as part of a deal with the state Solaris health agreed to maintain a bare bones list of critical services for 5 years. A small number of patients continued to be seen at the hospital while the majority of the disused building was filled with overflow equipment. Most of Muhlenberg's former patients went on to the other Solaris hospital in Edison, while a number wound up having to go as far as far as Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth.

An Urban Health Institute report was launched in 2012 to determine whether or not there was an immediate need for inpatient care in the area. The report found that there was not such a need. Moreover, the report found that it wouldn't make financial sense to reopen a hospital in the building, which was deemed "outdated". Despite this, citizens continued to insist that the hospital served a critical place in their community. Two years later the city of Plainfield issues their own study of the hospital property, to determine the long term consequences of not having an inpatient care facility in the city. At the same time the roughly 12,000sf Kenyon house was being heavily renovated to accommodate the existing services being held in the large, mostly empty hospital. By June 2014, all services in the massive building were moved to Kenyon House, and the main hospital was entirely shuttered.

It was right around this time that I first visited the Muhlenberg campus. I arrived to find a hospital that quite frankly still looked like it was being used. The lights were on throughout the complex, and the structures were in great shape with no plywood or other obvious signs if vacancy. I began poking around the building, but couldn't find any obvious way inside. One day while walking along the sidewalk with my camera I was approached by a security guard. He told me I was trespassing even though I was simply standing on the sidewalk on Randolph Road. I was surprised, as I had visited at least a dozen other disused hospitals in the state and none of them had security like that. I watched the place carefully over the next few years, until one day a friend told me she had found an open door to the hospital that we could easily sneak in through. She had taken a look inside and relayed that it definitely led into the main parts of the hospital. Before long we returned with our cameras, completely unaware of what we were about to experience.

The lights were still on inside the hospital, so we didn't have any problems sneaking around in the middle of the night. As we reached the emergency room in the Fitch Building I couldn't believe that was in front of me; a treasure trove of furniture and equipment. Wall to wall all we could see was hospital gear. By this point I had visited more than two dozen shuttered medical institutions in New Jersey, and nearly 100 across 12 states. I had seen tons of cool places, but nothing like this.

The further we wandered the more amazed we were with the place. We visited frequently until we had grown intimately familiar with the complex layout. The entrance that we used to access the hospital remained unknown, so we came and went as we pleased in total secrecy. We never had any issues with security interrupting our documentation, and we kept our photos to ourselves. Unfortunately one day we found out that a local numbskull found the hospital and told everyone he could about it. This included the other local big mouth "ruin tourist" Instagram crowd, who all showed up on the same day to visit the place. Two of these individuals were spotted going into the hospital by a passing security guard, who called the Plainfield police. They went inside and dragged out the trespassers, completely unaware that there were a half dozen or more other fools inside the hospital who all somehow managed to evade the police.

We were upset that this crowd had found the place. Usually that means the place would soon become a "flavor of the month" for the tourist crowd, which always brings about vandalism, theft, and eventually a heavier police presence. Thankfully they all were under the impression it was the type of place that had great security, and security thought they managed to bust the only people who had managed to get inside. While most stayed away, we continued to visit the place carefree.

The shield of obscurity that once protected the hospital had been pierced though, and before long we would begin noticing more and more evidence of vandalism and theft. The hospital was sold in 2018 to a developer who planned to demolish most of the hospital and create a medical mall. One day while we were inside the hospital, we heard footsteps and voices. In all the time we had been visiting the place we never bumped into anyone else. The footsteps got closer and closer, so we made the choice to head to the basement and hustle to our entrance before we found out who was there. We exited the building and came around the corner to see a work truck parked outside the open doors to the emergency room. We knew what was coming.

As the months passed we would sporadically check up on the hospital. There was a new security guard now, who parked his car right outside the alcove where we used to enter. It didn't matter, as any time we wanted to go inside we would just go around back where he couldn't drive to and take one of the many doors that had been left open by this point. One of our last visits was a birthday party for my girlfriend, where we all gathered to enjoy a cake and take one last journey through the place.

Before long demolition picked up in earnest. The historic 1903 Tracy and Swartwout contributions to the hospital, the 1939 administration building, the Hegeman Memorial Powerplant and surrounding structures were all completely obliterated. This was confusing, since the developer pledged to honor the historic integrity of the complex in the new development. Its rare that a hospital retains all of its historic buildings, so it was a great candidate for preservation. However, once again this turned out to be just another empty promise from a greedy developer. I assumed the story of the hospital was over, but then something.... historic happened....

.....Covid-19.

In May of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was ravaging the state of New Jersey. The state was desperate for hospital beds, as medical centers and morgue were overflowing. The Department of Health announced that they were going to be reopening shuttered hospitals and disused wings to try and accommodate the growing crisis. The the Army Corp of Engineers toured what was left of the hospital, but they unfortunately deemed the remaining structures too far gone to try and use. If development had held off for another year, the hospital would certainly have been revived as it was an excellent candidate for reuse. Its truly unfortunate things worked out the way they did.

And so, the long story of Muhlenberg comes to an end. Portions of its shell will go on to serve as a reminder of what once was, but nothing can replace the stories and memories of the thousands of employees and patients who once wandered its halls. The developers should be ashamed of themselves, as well as the city leaders who allowed the building to fall into such greedy hands with no protection in pace for the future. I'd like to say one day we will learn, but a quick look at this blog would suggest it may be too late.

Bonus: historic photos

The following photos have been taken from various annual reports and other periodicals regarding the hospital. At the time this is being published, none of these photos have been published elsewhere online.

"New private room building, administration building, and Closson Edgerton Maternity Building (on the left)

"The Women's Auxiliary Board gives unlimited support and assistance to the hospital throughout the year."

"The library in the School of Nursing is equipped with books for instructional purposes."

"A class in the school of nursing"

"Nurses training school, class of 1928"

"Senior class (1921) nurse training school"

"7,136 operations were performed at Muhlenberg in 1953"

"During 1953, a total of 8,997 X-Ray examinations were made at Muhlenberg"

"The School of Nursing has a Christmas party"

"The X-Ray Department. The department is equipped with modern apparatus for making X-ray plates. In the photograph, the operator is taking an X-ray picture of a man's hand."0

"During 1954, a total of 98,410 laboratory examinations were done at Muhlenberg."

"An all time record of 3369 babies were born at Muhlenberg during 1954."

"7,262 operations were performed at Muhlenberg in 1954"

"Serving Kitchens in the new hospital are scientifically designed"

"The Administration Building of the Muhlenberg Hospital, as it will appear after the completion of the new obstetrical floor."

"Isolation, Laundry, Heating Plant, Ambulance Garage, East Pavillion, Administration & Operating rooms, West Pavillion, Nurses Residence."

"Student nurses singing Carols through the hospital corridors, Christmas Eve. Mrs. Mildred Searles, conducting."

"Nurses home & training school."

Uncaptioned photo

"Equitment required for a modern operating room represents the investment of many thousands of dollars. In Muhlenberg's four "O.R."s last year there were 7339 operations."