Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing

Mountainside Hospital has been my local hospital my entire life. The large hospital building has several wings of different architectural styles, some dating back a century or more. This article is not about the hospital however. Instead, I will be focusing on the school building that was constructed across Bay Street.

The Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing was established in 1892, just one year after Mountainside Hospital opened its doors. This made the school one of the oldest in the state. York and Sawyer completed a new wing of the hospital in 1923. I believe this is around the time the largest portion of the Student Nurses Building was constructed, leading me to believe this building was also drafted by the pair. 

In 1966 a new wing was added to the right side of the existing building. This was the last major building upgrade the school would see. In 2009 it was announced that the school was not accepting any more applications, much to everyone's surprise.

Two years later the school merged with a program at Caldwell College, The class of 2011 was the last group of students to graduate, and the building was left mostly vacant. A few years later, while at the hospital as a visitor, I decided to take a shortcut to get back to my car. I discovered a back door had been left ajar, so I took a quick poke around the building.

I was surprised how much medical equipment had been left in the former school. It was almost as if the school building was a small hospital itself. The power was on, but the local police had been training inside and had made a huge mess of the place. They wrote all over the walls, smashed asbestos containing doors open, all the damage one might expect after being used to roleplay the pseudo-military fantasies of law enforcement.

I only visited the building once more before it was announced that demolition was set to begin in 2018. As fate would have it I also needed to have some emergency surgery at the same time, and my room overlooked the demolition site. I spent time over the span of several watching the crews rip apart the structure, feeling glad that I had the opportunity to document it.

Finally by January 2020 a new building opened on the site of the old school. Passing by now one would not even realize such a handsome structure ever graced the land. Hopefully this post serves as a decent reminder of what once was.