President of the Medical Center, John W. Rowe, MD records

36 boxes (264 inches)

This collection of papers from Dr. Rowe’s office is different from previous Presidents’ collections, providing a higher level view of Mount Sinai. There are very few files relating to the various departments of the Medical School or the Hospital as is seen in earlier President’s files. There is also little here relating to the Hospital’s establishment of the Mount Sinai Health System, although the merger with New York University is covered. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that Dr. Rowe served as President of the Mount Sinai Medical Center only. Earlier Presidents had also been Dean of the School of Medicine and so had oversight over these departmental or institution specific issues.

There is a great wealth of material regarding Mount Sinai’s efforts vis-à-vis other institutions. This includes proposed initiatives with Columbia University, the affiliation with the City’s Queens Hospital Center and the years of controversy over privatization of the Queens’ municipal hospitals, and the School of Medicine’s affiliation contracts with Elmhurst and Queens Hospitals. There are also files relating to the Department of Geriatrics and the development of creating ties with businesses and Keio University in Japan.

The merger with New York University is documented by two distinct series of files that were received and processed separately. The “MS-NYU Initiative” files (boxes 24-25) cover the initial proposal, development and implementation of the merger. The “NYU” files (boxes 27-28) document Dr. Rowe’s service as President of the combined Mount Sinai-NYU Health following the merger and include departmental correspondence, real estate / building records, and an extensive collection of material related to the NYU Downtown Hospital.

Mount Sinai’s real estate holdings and physical facilities are documented by an extensive subject file on buildings (BLD, boxes 4-6), and its financial activities by a finance series (FIN, boxes 13-14) and an extensive series on fundraising (FND, boxes 15-20.) There is a small amount of material related to Mount Sinai School of Medicine (box 26), primarily covering commencements, convocations and honorary degrees.

Also of importance are the extensive files on the search for a new Dean in 1996/97, the many files charting Mount Sinai’s efforts to deal with the rise of AIDS in New York, and the files on establishing the Office of Technology Transfer and its later efforts, a matter of great importance to institutions in the late 20th, early 21st century.

This material is partially restricted. Please contact the Archives (MSArchives@mssm.edu) for additional information.

• English

These are the office files of Dr. John Wallis Rowe. The records were donated to the Archives over a period of time. Accretions are added as received. Some files organized according to the old filing system used in the President’s Office, with subject grouping e.g. COM=Committees, DEP=Department, GRT=Grants, FIN=Financial, etc. These designations were retained and were inter-filed alphabetically with the other files. The bulk of the records were received in October 2000 when Dr. Rowe left Mount Sinai. Others were received in 2004 when the President’s Office moved to the Icahn Medical Institute building. Some of this later accretion was processed in 2010 and interfiled with the existing order, and the remainder was processed and interfiled in 2013.

Processed by Barbara Niss in April 2000. Updated by Barbara Niss in December 2000, March 2001, April 2003, and November 2006. Updated by Nicholas Webb in October 2010, March 2011, April 2013, October 2014, and August 2016.