to a frightful mortality during the cholera plague of 1832, when more
than thirty-five hundred New Yorkers died of the disease and a very few
who entered Bellevue recovered. Again, the Civil War all but demoralized
the work of the hospital. The school for nurses was established after an
investigation by public-spirited women disclosed that the nurses "were
nearly without exception to the last degree incompetent. . . ."

The pesthouse and prison atmosphere of Bellevue's past has been oblit-
erated. Through the years the hospital has steadily improved, and today
it ranks as one of the best medical centers in the world. To the average
New Yorker, Bellevue Hospital is a reassuring symbol of man's humanity
to man. To the poor of the East Side, admission to the hospital often rep-
resents a dividing line between illness and good health, life and death.
Overcrowding and understaffing continue to be the chief difficulties. The
new buildings have done much to remedy crowding, but it remains a vital
problem to the hospital, which must receive all comers even though it is
forced to put up cots in the corridors. Understaffing has been mitigated
by substantial additions to the staff in 1938, bringing the total to 3,200
employees—nurses, orderlies, attendants, and others; at the same time,
the old twelve-hour shift was cut to eight. Some six hundred WPA
workers are assisting in the children's, clerical, and other departments.

Empire State Building

5th Ave., 33d to 34th St. IRT Lexington Ave. subway (local) to 33d St.; or IRT
Broadway-7th Ave. subway to Pennsylvania Station (34th St.); or BMT subway to
34th St.; or 5th Ave. bus to 34th St. Observatories on 86th and io2d floors; hours,
8 a.m. to 1 a.m.; admission: adults $1.10, children 250.

The Empire State Building, 1,250 feet high, is the tallest structure in
the world. Seen from a distance it emerges above New York like a great
inland lighthouse. The Chrysler Building, second in height, measures
1,046 feet to the tip of the lance; the Woolworth Building, for many
years the tallest tower of Manhattan, is only 792 feet. The Eiffel Tower
in Paris is 1,0241/2 feet to the top of the flagpole.

The great limestone and steel structure has been called a monument to
an epoch—the boom years from 1924 to 1929. The building became, as
those who envisioned it promised, an internationally known address.

The superb main shaft of the Empire State rises in an almost unbroken
line out of the broad five-story base that covers approximately two acres
adjoining Fifth Avenue. Atop the shaft, at the eighty-sixth floor level, is