Filth and Disease In New York City: Some Highlights

Following on the news that the MTA will now, two months into the pandemic, begin daily cleaning of the subway cars we look back in time at other outbreaks of disease in Gotham.
From one of the internet's tiny treasures, the amazing Ephemeral New York:

A yellow fever outbreak made Greenwich Village

Epidemics can shape the way a city develops. And it was an outbreak of a lethal disease that helped create the Greenwich Village that’s been part of the larger city since the 1820s.....MORE

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What New York did in 1947 to evade an epidemic

In February 1947, an American importer named Eugene Le Bar boarded a bus in Mexico with his wife; the two were bound for New York City. That evening, he developed a headache and neck pain. Two days later, a rash developed......MORE

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Cholera’s grim warning for tenement landlords

When New York’s first cholera epidemic hit in 1832 and killed 3,515 people (out of a population of 250,000), the poor took the blame....MORE 

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A smallpox victim’s mummified body resurfaces

Construction workers operating a backhoe found her first. The workers were in Elmhurst, Queens, in an excavation pit building a new apartment complex....MORE 

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A Brooklyn anti-spitting ad to bring back today

Public health messaging doesn’t get more straightforward than this ad, which in plain language told the people of Brooklyn to stop “careless” spitting. (Is there any other kind?).....MORE 

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What life was like in a Manhattan “fever nest”

New Yorkers in the 19th century came up with some very descriptive slang names for poor, crowded neighborhoods where disease outbreaks tended to happen.....MORE 

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A mob torches New York’s Quarantine Hospital

New York in the 18th and 19th centuries was a place of constant ship traffic. Ships helped make the city rich—but the passengers and crew aboard them also brought bacteria and viruses....MORE 

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How yellow fever rebranded a Brooklyn village

Epidemics have shaped the growth and geography of New York. And one 19th century epidemic changed a neighborhood’s name, too....MORE 

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A department store becomes a makeshift hospital

This week, plans are underway to turn the glass-encased Jacob Javits Center into a hospital for the expected surge in coronavirus patients. It sounds radical, but it wouldn’t be the first time New York quickly took a massive open space and transformed it into a medical center....MORE

And to depart Ephemeral New York on a more upbeat note:

The pioneering clinic of NYC’s first ‘lady doctor’
Elizabeth Blackwell wasn’t just New York City’s first female medical doctor—she was the first woman to practice medicine in the entire country.

But mid-19th century Gotham is where she decided to open a pioneering dispensary and then an infirmary, and the growing city benefited enormously.....MORE