From Housecalls to Hospitals: The Historical Society’s New Exhibit on Healthcare in The Tarrytowns

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October 22, 2022

By Barrett Seaman—

The history of healthcare in the Tarrytowns is long on caring by beloved individual physicians but until relatively recently, short on actual brick-and mortar medical facilities. That becomes clear to anyone touring the Historical Society’s latest exhibit at its headquarters at the foot of Grove Street in Tarrytown.

A fascinating collection of photos, medical paraphernalia and nurses’ uniforms curated by Society President Sara Marcia, with help from a team of volunteers, brings to life a world of solo practitioners, who treated their patients mostly in the family home. But it also chronicles the pioneering efforts of concerned citizens to build proper medical facilities in the service of a steadily growing population. The ultimate result is Phelps Hospital.

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From the Revolution right through most of the 19^th century, medical care in the rivertowns was performed by individual doctors. As a physician, Thomas H. Smith treated the bodies of residents in what was then just Greenburgh, but he also tended to their souls as a traveling preacher. Dr. Horace Carruthers, whose house was in what is now Patriots Park had Washington Irving as his patient. Dr. James Scribner was so well respected as a physician that he was elected President of the village in 1872. Dr. John Robertson treated not only immigrants but also oil tycoons like John Archbold and William Rockefeller.

A man Sara Mascia called “probably the most influential community doctor” was Tarrytown native Dr. Richard Coutant, who returned to the village after the Civil War to set up practice. According to Mascia, Coutant and others recognized that a well-equipped healthcare facility was necessary to keep up with the rapidly evolving science of medicine as well as the needs of the community—“where patients could recover from surgery or severe illness in a controlled environment,” as Mascia said at a reception before the opening of the exhibit.

Sara Mascia has more than historical interest invested in the exhibit. Her father, Dr. Armond Mascia, was a pediatrician who routinely made house calls for his patients but was also part of the transition in the 1940s and ‘50s from solo practice to organized group practice with the invaluable benefit of a real functioning hospital.

Dr. Armond Mascia and nurse with young patient

The first facility was a single room rented in the former Coenhoven Inn at the corner of Main St. and Broadway, established in 1889 by a group of women who had formed the Provident Association of Tarrytown. After about a year in which 39 patients were treated the Association disbanded. It was succeeded by the Tarrytown Hospital Association in 1892, a group that raised funds to purchase a small house on Wood Court, near the base of Wildey Street. Richard Coutant was the first chief of staff, assisted by Catharine Halliday as Matron.

This first Tarrytown Hospital averaged three patients a day in its early years, serviced by a horse drawn ambulance.

A doctor’s medicine chest from the late 18th/early 19th century

In 1908, a fundraising campaign led to the construction of a new $80,000 hospital that opened at the end of Wood Court in 1911. Over the ensuing three decades, the Wood Court facility strained to provide care for a growing population. In 1947, the staffs of the Tarrytown Hospital and the Ossining Hospital urged their respective board to merge and create a larger medical center. Nearly a decade later, Phelps Memorial Hospital opened on land donated by the Phelps-James estate, with a healthy contribution by the Rockefeller family. It had 188 beds, 27 bassinets—and no debt.

Not many of Tarrytown’s current residents remember the old hospital on Wood Court, but one who does is now the chairman of Phelps’ Community Board, Kevin Plunkett. As a young lad, he needed his tonsils removed and was scheduled in for surgery at Wood Court. Fearful and crying, he declared to the nurse who came to take him into the stark operating room that he wasn’t going to. “Another nurse came up and said, ‘Kevin would you like to go and get ice cream?’,” he recalled. “What she didn’t say was that we were going to stop by the operating room.”

Today, there are dozens of operating rooms, including 17 day-surgery rooms, a full array of state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment as well as 238 beds in the modern and growing Phelps Memorial Hospital. Phelps is now part of the Northwell Health system but continues to operate as a community hospital serving the rivertowns and communities throughout the Hudson Valley.

The Historical Society’s exhibit at its One Grove Street headquarters is open to the public Thursdays and Saturdays from 2:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m. or by appointment. In addition to photographs of doctors, nurses and buildings, the exhibit features medical equipment and documents dating back more than a century.