HACKENSACK UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
HACKENSACK
A HOSPITAL OPENS IN A HOME
When Hackensack Hospital opened in 1888, nurses did more
than care for and cure patients. Over 24-hour shifts, they milked
cows, picked vegetables and trimmed oil lamp wicks.
Bergen County’s first hospital started with just 12 beds.
Today, the hospital has more than 750 beds and a pending,
state-record $714 million expansion due to extend capacity
by another 200.
The original hospital was housed in a 10-room home fronting
Second Street purchased for $4,000. The first expansion came in
1901 through a $35,000 project that brought the number of beds
to 35. That new building was expanded further 12 years
later, expanding capacity to 75 beds. The nurses’ home was
occupied by 1916, and a new six-story, all-brick hospital came
in 1923 at a cost of $870,000. Total capacity hit 250. The X-ray
room was known as the best in New Jersey.
1982
MODERNIZATION
20
2019 EDITION (201) HEALTH
1950
Hackensack Hospital as seen in
May 1937
ADDING MORE BEDS
The original wooden structures remained in use until 1937,
when a six-story north wing was added at a cost of $270,000. Little
changed until 1950, when the hospital was forced to turn a patient
away for the first time. Demand grew for a proposed $1.75 million,
110-bed expansion.
That new south wing, named in honor of 47-year hospital
administrator Mary Stone Conklin, opened in 1954. Five years
later, hospital officials gained approval for a $3.2 million
expansion.
Constructed in 1965, it added 137 new beds to the 365 already
at the facility. A second, $500,000 phase in the project provided
six surgical rooms to care for the patients.
By the late 1970s, modernization rather than expansion spurred a proposed $40 million renovation. Opened
in 1982 at the renamed Hackensack Medical Center, the new 180,000-square-foot George Link, Jr. Pavilion did
not add beds, but instead brought improvements to the surgical, intensive care and emergency care units.
Later in 1982, hospital officials revealed a plan to add two more floors to the four-story Pavilion to increase
capacity to 532. The next year, the massive medical center distinguished itself further by becoming the first
Bergen County hospital to offer open-heart surgery.
A dip in admissions sidelined the Pavilion’s addition, as did the 1987 merger with South Bergen Hospital.
The merger allowed Hackensack Medical officials to relocate the Institute for Child Development and to
increase its own capacity to 529 beds. The same year, renovations to the state’s first burn center, established
in 1974, were planned.
1888
The original Hackensack
Hospital, seen in 1890, was a
10-room home.