Successor Found

Before 1934, New York City's municipal hospitals were not model institutions. Ward leaders ordered special diets for pet patients, inmates of the City Home on Welfare Island were persuaded to make wills leaving their paltry goods to the superintendent, and at the Farm Colony on Staten Island many employes were habitually drunk.

When Mayor LaGuardia was elected, he appointed as hospital commissioner a stern-faced doctor who for years had been head of top-flight Mt. Sinai Hospital, and onetime chief of Manhattan's department of health -- Sigismund Schulz Goldwater. Dr. Goldwater fired political appointees, drew up strict rules for the management of all New York City hospitals. He wangled research appropriations for the hospital department from the city for the first time in history. During his administration he spent over $50,000,000 for hospital construction. But, says he, "I am just as proud of the old buildings I demolished as the new ones I built." Perhaps his biggest accomplishments were the construction of a 1,500-bed chronic-disease hospital and a convalescent day camp, on Welfare Island.

A great hand at modernizing U. S. hospitals is 67-year-old Dr. Goldwater. A talented though unschooled architect, he has acted as private consultant in the building of over 200 big hospitals throughout the world, was called in to help reform the British voluntary hospital system, helped design a vast institution in Leningrad for the Russian Government. His is the plan for operating-room suites now used in big hospitals : two surgical rooms linked by a sterilizing and "scrub" room.

Two years ago Dr. Goldwater wanted to retire, spend more time on his hobbies, writing verse and music. But the Mayor could find no one to fill the bill at $10,000 a year. The commissioner advertised in the papers for a $6,500-a-year deputy, promised him "at least one heartbreak a day . . . and at least one hearty laugh a week." Although some 200 men were bold enough to apply, none was acceptable.

Despite the Mayor's pleas, last spring Dr. Goldwater, hoping to get out of his commissioner's job, took another, as head of New York's Associated Hospital Service (3-c--a-day plan). Until the Mayor could find someone to take his place, he continued to pinch-hit as hospital commissioner. Last week he was finally able to resign, for the Mayor had persuaded 48-year-old Willard Cole Rappleye, dean of Columbia's medical and dental schools, to fill in for the 15 months of the Mayor's unexpired term. Gentle, white-haired Dr. Rappleye, an old friend of Dr. Goldwater, plans to return to Columbia next year.

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