May 16, 2004 was known as the Patient Move Day, where the 200 patients who were being treated in the old Baldwin Avenue building were welcomed at the new Jersey City Medical Center at 355 Grand St.
A historic day inside
Eight months of planning and preparation went into the move that started around 6 a.m. with the first patient, 11-year old Parecilla Lomini, being taken out of the hospital. It ended at approximately 11:30 a.m. with the final patient, Moushra Habib, placed in the final ambulance to leave the old Medical Center.
Dr. Jonathan Metsch, the president of Jersey City Medical Center, was at the center hours before the patient move to make sure that there were no glitches in this massive undertaking. Metsch, who has worked at the Medical Center since 1989, gazed with sadness at the old building but was looking forward to spending every day in the new facility.
"It's unlike anyplace I've ever worked, a beautiful old building with a first-class faculty," said Metsch, "but the new hospital is so essential to the community."
Bill Dauster, the senior vice president for development and public affairs for the Medical Center, had been up since 4 in the morning, with very little sleep from the day before, working on last-minute arrangements for the historic day. Dauster was the point man coordinating much of the patient move operation, constantly on a walkie talkie or checking his Blackberry pager.
Most of the 1,800 staff members were on the several floors of the Medical Center still in operation, doing their part in the move, from helping transport the patients as quickly and as carefully as possible to helping to move office and medical equipment out the building. Inside the dimly-lit building, a stream of energy put everyone in a state of controlled frenzy.
"This one patient is giving me a problem. I need some help with this one," called out one nurse on the first floor of the hospital.
All action inside the building was overseen and overheard in what was dubbed "the command center," located in the admitting room, where patients would wait. Robert Lahita, the chairman of medicine and medical director of EMS for the Medical Center, was stationed at a desk there manning walkie talkies and phones.
A historic day outside
There were a total of 55 ambulances with 110 personnel facilitating the transfer of patients.
All action stopped temporarily around 9 a.m., as a fire alarm went off at the new hospital causing a check of the alarm and security system before any ambulances could make drop off any patients.
Also moving about during the dance of the ambulances were medical staff, either nurses leaving their overnight shifts or doctors on a break in the parking lot being shooed away by EMS.
"This is it. Sad, very sad. I was used to it," said Marie, a native of Haiti who had spent the past two years working out of the old building as a nurse's aide.
Leon Yost, a longtime photographer and Jersey City preservationist hired by the hospital to chronicle the day's events, thought it harkened back to the past.
"This reminds me of a Hague-era event, the procession of the ambulances and this move done on such a grand scale," said Yost, referring to the legendary Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague, who was responsible for the hospital being built in 1932.
An employee at the Medical Center Luncheonette on the corner of Baldwin and Montgomery Streets had been serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to the workers and patients of the hospital for 25 years.
"We'll wait and see. I'll miss the hospital and the people who would crowd in here," said the Luncheonette employee, packing a customer's order of scrambled eggs with fried potatoes. "But I think they'll make the trip from Grand Street to here, because we make the best food."
One customer on his way out of the luncheonette commented that he was born in the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital, located in a building behind the Medical Center. He wondered if "they're moving to the new hospital, are they going to have the same doctors."
The final announcement
By 11 a.m., the number of patients left to be taken out of the hospital had dwindled to 10.
"How many more patients?" "I'm not sure, I'll check." That became a constant call-and-response for the next half-hour, as impatient witnesses to history kept asking officials questions.
Soon, an announcement was made by Medical Center Chairman of Medicine Robert Lahita: "This is Baldwin Command Center...this hospital is officially closed. Have a good day and we'll see you at the Grand."
There was applause as the last stretcher was maneuvered out the hospital's lobby, the last patient waving to the throng cheering outside.
The ambulance was about to leave the old building when workers got to the task of closing down the Depression-era Art Deco complex. They taped signs (in English and Spanish) to the various exits and entrances of the hospital that read, "The Hospital has relocated to 355 Grand St. Jersey City"
Neal Sobon, a 10-year employee, said that the old building outlived its usefulness as medical technology advanced over the years. But he summed up in a word what the hospital on 50 Baldwin Ave. has that he believes the new location lacks at the moment: Character.
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