History Of Holy Name Hospital
It was the dedication of two Teaneck surgeons and the leadership of a Catholic sister that made Holy Name Hospital a reality in 1925.
Recognizing the need to serve the sick and indigent of the community, Drs. Frank McCormack and George Pitkin appealed to Mother General Agatha Brown of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace for help in finding a suitable hospital site and in providing administrative and nursing staffs. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace had been a presence in New Jersey since 1885, one year after the order was founded in England with the goal of fostering peace and justice in the world.
The Sisters purchased the estate of the late William Walter Phelps and erected the hospital there, staffing it with Sisters. At its opening in 1925, Holy Name Hospital boasted 115 beds. Five years later a 90-bed clinic building was built to meet the needs of area residents who had been impoverished by the Great Depression.
Teaneck was little more than a rural village then; in all of Bergen County there were some 250,000 inhabitants. With the completion of the George Washington Bridge in 1931 the familiar cornfields and apple orchards began to disappear. A surge of development followed World War II, and the area soon became a thriving residential and business community.
Holy Name thrived as well. In 1955 a second addition was completed: the four-story, 110-bed Marian Pavilion. Fewer than 10 years later two more stories were added to the pavilion. During the 1960s the west wing of the Marian Building was enlarged by three more units.
Faced again with the threat of overcrowding in the 1980s, the hospital complex was once more enlarged with construction of the Breslin/Kennedy Building. With each addition, the hospital has grown not only in size but in reputation, most recently with addition of the Regional Cancer Center and its state-of-the-art radiation therapy facilities. Today Holy Name Hospital is one of the leading health care providers in northern New Jersey.
© Holy Name Hospital
Article submitted by Alex Phelps Penry
