Old Lincoln Hospital: Champanier Mural – Bronx NY

Description

The Lincoln Hospital (also known as the Lincoln Medical and Health Center), has contained several WPA murals. During the 1930s, the Lincoln Hospital (then located at 141st St. and Southern Blvd. in the Bronx) received at least three WPA murals. Ruth Egri painted a large mural entitled “Disease, Cure and Prevention” for the hospital in 1938-1939; Eric Mose painted another WPA mural for the hospital in 1938; and Albert Kelly painted a multi-panel mural entitled “Circus Parade.” In 1976, the hospital moved to its present location. Unfortunately, a conversation with an employee of Lincoln Medical Center in 2016 leads us to believe that all the murals were destroyed along with the old hospital building c. 2010.

The new Lincoln Hospital later housed another WPA mural. In 1936, under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, Abram Champanier had created a series of 16 murals for the children’s ward of Gouverneur Hospital in Brooklyn, on the theme of “Alice in Wonderland in New York.” Around 1980, long after the hospital had closed, five of the murals were restored by Alan Farancz and distributed to locations around the city. A 1994 New York Times article reported that one of the murals, depicting “Alice and her friends making music at the Central Park Zoo,” had been moved to the lobby of the infant’s and women’s care division of the Lincoln Hospital. The current status of this mural is unknown to the Living New Deal.