{"nrhp_refnum":"86002683","name":"R & S Building","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"492 First Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"New York","county":"Manhattan","state":"NY","lat":40.74065451100006,"lon":-73.97498841999999,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1986-09-22","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A six-story steel-frame institutional building at 492 First Avenue (corner of East 29th Street) on the Bellevue Hospital campus in Manhattan, built 1903-1912 to a McKim, Mead & White plan as the Pathological Department and Male Dormitory.","why_significant":"The building is cited as architecturally significant urban institutional design by McKim, Mead & White, led by Charles Follen McKim. It is the only intact surviving component of McKim's master plan for Bellevue, a compact, connected high-rise hospital scheme that influenced later single-block hospitals. It also expresses a restrained Italian Renaissance style and recalls the development of Bellevue Hospital.","narrative":"Standing at the corner of First Avenue and East 29th Street, this six-story building was constructed between 1903 and 1912 as the Pathological Department and Male Dormitory of Bellevue Hospital. It was designed by McKim, Mead & White, with Charles Follen McKim responsible for the overall hospital plan. That plan joined multistory pavilions into a compact complex suited to a crowded city site, departing from the separate low pavilions of nineteenth-century hospitals. This building is the only intact survivor of that scheme. Its steel frame is clad in granite, red brick, limestone and terra cotta, and its facades recall an Italian Renaissance palace, with a central loggia of three tall arches on the First Avenue side. The exterior remains largely unaltered. The interior, once filled with laboratories, autopsy rooms and a dormitory, has deteriorated badly after years of abandonment. Its significance rests on the architecture and its link to the long history of Bellevue.","period_of_significance":"1903-1912","architect_builder":"McKim, Mead & White","architectural_style":"Italian Renaissance","criteria":[],"status_note":"Exterior retains almost complete integrity and is in very good repair; the interior is badly deteriorated after almost 10 years of abandonment, with collapsed ceilings from roof leaks.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:45.035707-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/86002683.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86002683/b72cecc1b0-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/86002683/b72cecc1b0-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Americasroof at English Wikipedia","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bellevue-rs.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Americasroof at English Wikipedia</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bellevue-rs.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75319847","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%26_S_Building","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5818264"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/manhattan/r-and-s-building-86002683/"}