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Neighbors remember St. Vincent's Hospital With a Makeshift Memorial

By DNAinfo Staff on May 3, 2010 4:51pm  | Updated on May 3, 2010 4:47pm

By Nicole Breskin

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

GREENWICH VILLAGE — Days after the permanent shut-down of St. Vincent’s, neighbors expressed their collective grief by creating a makeshift memorial outside the bankrupt hospital.

Lighted votive candles, bunches of sunflowers and a dozen personalized messages adorned the boarded-up main entrance to the 160-year-old hospital on lower Seventh Avenue, where until last Friday ambulances sped back and forth on their daily life-saving missions.

The memorial included a handwritten note from a former maternity patient, Alicia McCarvill, thanking "all of St Vincent’s staff for delivery of my beautiful children." The note included their birth years.

Another message, from a nurse who did not sign her name, read: “I love you SVH. Gone but not forgotten!”

Some messages were more spiritual: “With every crucifixion there is resurrection, God bless SVH!”

“Thank you St. Vincent’s for saving my life," another note said simply.

Dina Lowdry, who lives in the neighborhood, stopped short when she saw the memorial.

“It made me very sad and emotional,” she said. “It looks as though a neighbor or a family member died. That’s how much the hospital meant to the community.”

St. Vincent’s Hospital closed on Friday mired in debts totalling $700 million.

A marker next to at the shuttered hospital's entrance invites passers-by others to add individual tributes to the memorial.