NYC AIDS Memorial Park at St. Vincent's Triangle

You are standing at the site of the New York City AIDS Memorial, a space that serves as a direct gateway to the history of the epidemic in this city. This triangular plot of land is positioned across from what was once St. Vincent’s Hospital. During the nineteen eighties, the hospital became ground zero for the AIDS crisis in New York, housing the first and largest AIDS ward on the East Coast. When the hospital first began seeing young, otherwise healthy patients arriving with unexplained symptoms in 1981, medical knowledge was so limited that many of these individuals faced a death sentence without access to effective treatment.