Monsey Memories: The Founding of Good Samaritan Hospital

By Y. S. Gold

A medical center that is frequented by Rockland County residents, Good Samaritan Hospital was founded around the turn of the 20th Century. By 1902, the population of Suffern had reached just over 1,800 people. There were four hotels, one school, a lumberyard, an opera house, and about 40 small stores that comprised the business district.

On November 12, 1902, a seven-bed “emergency hospital” joined this growing community. A former mansion in the heart of town had been transformed into the Good Samaritan Hospital. How this small village became home to Rockland County’s second hospital was the direct result of one of Suffern’s seasonal residents, Mrs. Thomas Fortune Ryan. 

By July of 1902, Mrs. Ryan had found a location for her hospital at Suffern. The former Maltbie/Messimer mansion, a Civil War era Italianate-style estate located on Orange Avenue and East Park Place was purchased by Mrs. Ryan for $7,500. At the time of its acquisition, the mansion was in use by Dr. William Eckoff, who had been conducting the Herbart Preparatory School. 

Since Mrs. Ryan negotiated to pay off the lease within five days, Dr. Eckoff was compelled to move at once. Mrs. Ryan originally intended to call the hospital Good Samaritan Home. She felt that people might avoid a “hospital” due to the prevailing fear that people had of such an institution. But the doctors with whom she had consulted persuaded her to call it Good Samaritan Hospital. 

The work of remodeling the mansion into a hospital was placed under the direction of George Sutherland, a carpenter who worked for the Ryans at Montebello. By late fall, the former estate was transformed into a seven-bed emergency hospital complete with a hand-operated elevator and fully equipped kitchen. The front parlor became the reception area and the cupola housed an operating room.

Familiar with St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City and the Sisters of Charity who founded it, Mrs. Ryan had by this time approached the New Jersey community headquartered in Convent Station to run her fledgling hospital. Without any special ceremony, four sisters arrived on the morning of November 12, 1902, to take charge. 

Sister Melita was appointed superior, Sister Mary Basil, the cook and laundress, and Sisters Anna de Sales and Margaret Josephine were the nursing staff. They were greeted that day by Dr. Demarest and Mr. Sutherland. It was later recalled that “the carpenters were still working and the whole place had to be cleaned.” However, the sisters did find the pantry well supplied and they all sat down to a “delicious” boiled ham dinner.

After the opening of the hospital, the pioneering sisters did virtually everything, “the kitchen work, house cleaning, care of the patients, and the operating room work.”  In the article featured here, we learn more about the later history of Good Sam, a place where Rockland residents have turned to for healing for one-and-quarter centuries.