Upcoming Event: A Renaissance at Sea View Hospital
A Renaissance Tour at Sea View Hospital ~ Sunday, May 31, 2009 2-5:00PM
Come, join in a grand tour of Staten Island’s Sea View Hospital’s restored historic buildings and grounds on Sunday, May 31 from 2:00 to 5:00 PM. The Sea View Historical Foundation and the Preservation League of Staten Island are hosting a walking tour and visits to the renovated buildings and grounds. Advance tickets for the tour are available on Pay Pal and credit card purchase for $25 each.
As a special treat, Staten Island Historian, Thomas Matteo will personally lead two tours of Sea View at 2:15 and 4:00 PM. These tours will be limited to 20 people each. Reservations are required with an additional $10.00 charge.
The Sea View Hospital and Rehabilitation Center and Home site has experienced major changes in the past five years. The tour will focus on several of these and, hopefully, give you an idea of the potential of this historic and important place. Come and enjoy the experience!!
We will be using individual cell phones to provide recorded tour information. You will be given numbers to call and receive detailed descriptions of what is on tour.
The tour will begin with registration at the Staff House. (A Sea View Map showing parking locations will be handed out at the gate house.) The first stop is the Fireplace Room at the Administration Building to get a first viewing of the extensive terra-cotta work that exists at Sea View.
The next stop is the new Sea View Medical Museum, newly relocated in the Surgical Building. The Medical Museum is a remarkable collection of historic medical equipment, records and artifacts collected by the employee volunteers at the hospital.
Then we move on to Park Lane at Sea View the newly restored Nurses Quarters Building now site-adapted to provide 103 units of senior housing, including two bedroom, one bedroom and studio units. This project is, in many ways, a true triumph of historic preservation. The windows are original. They were removed from the building, sent to a restoration facility and reinstalled giving an elegant felling to the space inside the individual units. Walk around the building and enjoy the new landscaping.
As you walk around the end of the new Park Lane building you will see the gate to the old Children’s Hospital building, now being considered for renovation and use as the John W. Lavelle Preparatory Charter School.
Walk past the new entrance to the Park Lane building and look up at the top of the abandoned Women’s Open Air Pavilions to view a bit of the gilded terra-cotta tiles on the upper floor.
Stop and enter the Staten Island Ballet Building. They will be awarding scholarships to ballet students in the practice room. You are welcome to enter and observe. This building was the former Sea View Morge and Labratory. The SI Ballet received an award for restoration of this building from the Preservation League in 2007.
Walk past the Colony Hall Building and enter the Lou Caravone Community Service Building (Community Board #2). This is the former Catholic Chapel, built in 1928, an authentic Spanish Mission style building. Three years ago Sea View removed the drop ceiling and exposed the elegant hammer beam roof, removed the paint covering the stained glass windows and restuccoed the exterior. The Preservation League gave in an AWARD plaque.
Walk across the street and enter the door to the senior day care center of the Robitzek Building. Take the elevator up to the main lobby on the ground floor where three of the Delph terra-cotta murals have been installed. These tiles are on (hopefully) temporary display here awaiting adaptive reuse of the Patient Pavillions where they were installed. Sea View staff have been carefully removing, numbering and saving the tile pieces as they suffer the ravages of exposure to the weather. The murals are considered true masterpiecs of terra cotta art.
Follow the signs leading to the enclosed corridor leading to the modern Interfaith Chapel and then on to the restored Colony Hall. Finish your tour with a High Tea and tell us what you think of the Renaissance at Sea View Hospital.
For more information and to register, vist: http://www.preservestatenisland.org/?page_id=28