About Lincoln

Lincoln Medical Center is a full-service acute care hospital and one of the premier trauma centers in the country. The hospital offers comprehensive primary, secondary, preventive, and specialty care. Our single-site Emergency Department is the busiest in the region and among the three busiest in the country. Lincoln is staffed by more than 300 physicians and has 362 inpatient beds.

The hospital is easily reached by public and private transportation and has its own spacious, safe, and inexpensive indoor parking. Lincoln is committed not only to excellent patient care but to being an excellent teaching institution, with accredited residency programs in all the major specialties and subspecialties and the ancillary services that support both good patient care and residents’ learning.

Lincoln contracts with PAGNY (Physician Affiliate Group of New York) for physician management services. Through PAGNY, Lincoln has an academic affiliation with New York Medical College and Weill Cornell Medical College, which includes faculty appointments at Weill Cornell, rotation of Cornell medical students to Lincoln, and access to Cornell’s clinical and academic facilities and resources for Lincoln faculty and residents.

A look back in time

Lincoln Hospital was founded in 1839 as the “Home for the Relief of Aged Indigent Colored Persons” by a group of prominent philanthropists led by John Jay; over time the hospital function became the most important part of its work. In 1882 the name was changed to “The Colored Home and Hospital.”

After more than half a century at various sites in Manhattan, in 1895 the board of trustees purchased a large lot in the South Bronx — then a semi-rural part of the city — at the corner of 141st Street and Southern Boulevard. A new hospital with the latest medical facilities was dedicated on April 29, 1899. It became a general hospital open to all people regardless of color or creed while keeping its founding commitment to the relief and advancement of Black New Yorkers. Later it was renamed Lincoln Hospital in honor of the Great Emancipator.

In 1925, with demand growing in a more densely populated South Bronx and philanthropic funds declining, the trustees sold Lincoln to New York City’s Department of Public Welfare. In 1976 a new facility was dedicated about two miles from the “old Lincoln,” at a construction cost of $220 million.

Across more than 180 years, Lincoln has been the scene of great achievements in clinical care and medical education:

• Dr. Ramon Castroviejo performed some of the earliest corneal transplants.
• Dr. Jacob Geiger established the first blood transfusion facility in the country.
• Dr. Emmanuel Goldberger developed vectorcardiography while attending on the medical wards.
• Dr. Shepard Shapiro introduced warfarin into clinical practice.
• The nation’s first training school for Black nurses was established at Lincoln in 1839.