Greenville Hospital is an acute care community hospital with 100-beds in south Jersey City. The contemporary twentieth-century style brick building has been renovated over the years with extensions to the structure and reconfiguration of the entrance. The local hospital in the Greenville section of Jersey City began in 1898 as the "German Hospital and Dispensary of Hudson County, New Jersey" in a house located on Danforth Avenue by the Schwabischer Kranken Unterstitszungs Verein of Hudson County. Serving as an outpatient dispensary, it was operated by the Suabian Sick Benefit and Folks Festival Society, a German civic organization. They purchased the property and incorporated the hospital "to care for, nurture the sick, injured or those afflicted by disease, or victims of accidents or casualty, and the training, education and instruction or preparation of persons, male or female, to act as nurses." At the time of the founding of the hospital, a new wave of German immigrants were arriving in Greenville, a section of Jersey City where earlier generations of Germans had previously settled. The newcomers were most likely fleeing their homeland in anticipation of growing militarism in Europe and future war. One of the German Luther congregations they founded is the Greenville Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church erected in 1877 on Kennedy Boulevard and McAdoo Avenue. The Gothic-style church was renovated circa 1899. Another is the English Lutheran Church of the Redeemer (now called the Redeemer Lutheran Church) on Warner Avenue constructed in 1898. The new and present building on Kennedy Boulevard was designed by local architect Robert C. Dixon and was dedicated on May 30, 1912. New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson joined Jersey City's Mayor H. Otto Wittpenn for the ceremony. Also participating at the laying of the cornerstone was the Rev. John E. Heindel of the Church of the Redeemer. The hospital opened to the community on June 1, 1914, with 32 beds. It thereby became the third hospital in Jersey City along with the Jersey City Hospital on Baldwin Avenue (later Jersey City Medical Center) and the Christ Hospital on Palisade Avenue. Due to the pressures of anti-German hostilities during World War I, the directors of the German Hospital renamed it the Greenville Hospital in 1918. They were determined not to allow the name to stand in the way of assisting those in need, especially with the increasing demands on local hospitals due to the war. The motto of the small neighborhood hospital was "Partners in care--sharing time and resources," one that has been carried over to its present day mission. Expansion of the hospital continued over the years with additional services and facilities. The west wing to the hospital was added in 1971. In 1989, the Greenville Hospital joined with the Jersey City Medical Center; two years later they both joined the LibertyHealth System, a consortium of health care services in Hudson County. A renovation of Greenville Hospital took place in the late 1990s coinciding with its centennial anniversary. An intensive care unit was added in May 2004. The completion of the new Jersey City Medical Center, less than three miles away on Grand Street and Jersey Avenue, however, has recently made it necessary for the Greenville Hospital and the Medical Center to reconsider their overall mission and individualized special services to the community of Jersey City. References: |
| By: Carmela Karnoutsos Project Administrator: Patrick Shalhoub |
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