THE most unfortunate year for Queens in my recent memory must have been 2009. That was when the borough lost the Catholic-run Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica and St. John’s Hospital in Elmhurst, a year after Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills closed after declaring bankruptcy. In 2012, Peninsula Hospital in Edgemere closed, with Holliswood Hospital in the following year. Borough residents adapted by visiting their doctors more often, and urgent care centers popped up to fill the void. But then the Covid pandemic demonstrated the need for hospitals as emergency rooms were overrun with patients.
It can take more than a decade to transform a former hospital into something else, usually an apartment complex. If one knows where to look, there are hints of the site’s medical past in full view. At 152-11 89th Avenue in Jamaica, Parkhill City luxury residences were built on the site of Mary Immaculate Hospital.
Above the former hospital’s main entrance is a Catholic heraldry emblem whose meaning is not known to me. Perhaps a reader can respond in comments. This building was completed in 1929, when Patrick Joseph Hayes was the cardinal of the Archdiodese of New York, but his personal emblem did not look like the one here. The hospital was founded in 1902 by the Sisters of Saint Dominic, but their emblem also doesn’t look like the one here.
[Catholic heraldry is an easy rabbit hole to descend. Here is one website that deals with it, and there are others. — Ed.]
From Comments: shield of Thomas Malloy, archbishop of Brooklyn from 1951-1956, bishop since 1921. Queens was included in the bishopric.
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I’ve had no difficulty entering a doorman building simply by confidently walking in as if I were a resident here. I then walked around the posh interior, finding only one other trace of its past, the marble staircase and interior balcony behind the old entrance.
Downtown Jamaica has many examples of repurposed buildings that preserve the historic streetscape while fulfillnig new functions. In 2017, Kevin documented the former central branch of Queens Public Library that became the borough’s family court, and then became an apartment building. In 2025, he walked on Jamaica Avenue, documenting a landmarked former Reformed church turned performing arts center, and the landmarked former Loew’s Valencia Theater turned Tabernacle of Prayer.
A couple of blocks east from the former hospital is another such example that is not landmarked, Firehouse Health Center, whose name indicates the building’s original use. The last fire engines left this building in 1965. Unlike the hospital, Ladder Company 127 and Engine Company 198 received a new building nearby at 153-11 Hillside Avenue.
Some of the blocks in Jamaica can be very long, but if one knows where to look, there are pedestrian paths designed as shortcuts, such the Jamaica Pathway on the block of the former firehouse. They remind me of Midtown’s 6 ½ Avenue.
Sergey Kadinsky is the author of Hidden Waters of New York City: A History and Guide to 101 Forgotten Lakes, Ponds, Creeks, and Streams in the Five Boroughs (2016, Countryman Press), adjunct history professor at Touro University and the webmaster of Hidden Waters Blog. This month, Sergey was blessed as he and his spouse welcomed their third child.
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5/22/26
8 comments
I remember a hospital in Jamaica called Mary Immaculate
Some of my friends from Queens Village vollunteered there
I vagiely remember had “ tea dances” on Sunday afternoon for High School kids. They also had a very good nursing school. The nursing program was picked up by the Catholic Medical Center School of nursing whoch closed in 2009
Queens is not part of the Archdiocese of New York, it is in the Diocese of Brooklyn. It looks very like the coat of arms of Bishop Thomas Molloy. https://heraldry-wiki.com/wiki/Thomas_Edmund_Molloy
You win this trivia challenge. Congrats!
I was born in Mary Immac Hospital in 1937 and my brothers in 1939 and 1943 too! This was when the El ran along Jamaica Avenue. Our family lived In Bellaire, Queens, just west of Queens Village, The hospital is no longer! Do I win the trivia challenge?
Sergey – The heraldry is the coat of arms of Bishop Thomas Molly, who was bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn when the hospital was built. The Brooklyn diocese was created in 1853 from the Archdiocese of New York and included all of Long Island (Kings, Queens and Suffolk counties). Now the Brooklyn Diocese covers Brooklyn and Queens. The Diocese of Rockville Centre was created (the catholic term is erected) in 1957 and covers Nassau and Suffolk counties.
And that fact no doubt explains the name of Molloy University in Rockville Centre, Long Island. It was founded in 1955 as a Catholic women’s college, when Nassau and Suffolk Counties were still part of the Brooklyn Diocese. Molloy later became co-educational, and in 2022 it became Molloy University.
Many Catholic cemeteries on Long Island are still owned by the Diocese of Brooklyn. St Charles and Resurrection come to mind.
One of my first jobs in Queens was at Monseigner Fitzpatrick Pavillion Nursing Homeback in 1995. I worked as a recreation leader at the nursing home housed in Mary Immaculate Hospital that overlooked the Rufus King park. Back then it was neglected and I believe the historic Rufus King residence was either closed orhad very limited visitor hours. After the park finally got some desperately needed TLC under Bloomberg, the area improved along with greater policing to reduce drug trafficking. Have good memories working at that nursing home in Mary Immaculate. It saddened me when it was sitting there derelict for years. I would rather see the hopsital refitted for condos then completely demolished (although some of it was).