{"nrhp_refnum":"83001746","name":"Society for the Lying-In Hospital","other_names":["Bernstein Institute","Beth Israel Hospital"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"305 2nd Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"New York","county":"Manhattan","state":"NY","lat":40.73469609700004,"lon":-73.98372504599996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1983-09-01","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Health/Medicine","Architecture","Social History"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A seven-story Classical Revival hospital building at 305 Second Avenue in Manhattan, between 17th and 18th Streets, designed in 1899 by Robert H. Robertson for the Society of the Lying-In Hospital of New York. It is now known as the Bernstein Institute.","why_significant":"The building is a good example of the Classical Revival style and a representative late work by architect Robert H. Robertson. It also housed a major charitable maternity institution that served the poor and immigrants of the Lower East Side and was the largest maternity service in the nation by 1895.","narrative":"Rising seven stories above Second Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets, this Manhattan hospital was designed in 1899 by architect Robert H. Robertson for the Society of the Lying-In Hospital of New York. Built of limestone, brick and terra cotta, it combines a heavily rusticated base, a two-story entrance with paired Corinthian columns, red brick upper floors and a classical attic pavilion. Carved medallions of infants mark its function. Robertson, who began with Victorian Gothic and Romanesque work before turning to classical designs and early skyscrapers, produced here a more academic example of the Classical Revival style. The building also housed a charity founded in 1798 to provide free childbirth care to women who could not afford it. By 1895 it was the largest maternity service in the nation, and in 1899 it attended thousands of home births, mostly for foreign-born women. Financier J. Pierpont Morgan and other prominent New Yorkers helped fund the new building.","period_of_significance":"1800-1899","architect_builder":"Robert Henderson Robertson","architectural_style":"Classical Revival","criteria":[],"status_note":"Listed as occupied and in good condition; no known exterior alterations apart from new glass and metal doors installed between 1971 and 1975. The interior has been extensively altered.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:42.534973-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/83001746.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83001746/1f832f66f0-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83001746/1f832f66f0-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"Beyond My Ken","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lying-in_hospital_305_Second_Ave_with_detail.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Beyond My Ken</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lying-in_hospital_305_Second_Ave_with_detail.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75319911","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_the_Lying-In_Hospital","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q33341"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/manhattan/society-for-the-lying-in-hospital-83001746/"}