Within Rose Hill and Kips Bay itself, large scale urban renewal took place in the twenty block area between 23rd and 33rd Streets, Second Avenue and the East River, where many of the existing buildings were demolished over a twenty-year period. This process began with the expansion of the medical facilities located along First Avenue. Planning began in the 1940s for a large building campaign to expand NYU and Bellevue and for a new Veterans Administration Hospital. This led to the demolition of nearly all non-hospital related structures between 23rd and 34th Streets, First Avenue and the East River, including thirty-nine tenements and some of the few remaining industries in the area that employed 1,400 people. For Bellevue, the project included construction of a new nursing school, completed in 1956 on the block between 25th and 26th Streets, and a 25-story structure between 27th and 28th Streets, completed in 1974. This massive building added 1,500 beds to Bellevue by significantly altering McKim, Mead and White’s 1908 plan for the hospital. NYU constructed a complex of five buildings on an eleven-acre superblock running from 30th to 34th Streets. This supremely modern facility, completed in 1950, helped NYU emerge as a leading teaching hospital.
