Henry G. Barbey

The great interest of Henry G. Barbey’s life was unquestionably New York Hospital in this city. There was, to be sure, his engineering firm which, among other accomplishments, built Kaiser Wilhelm’s yacht Meteor. He himself, after graduating from Harvard, had studied naval architecture for two years at Glasgow. Returning home he founded the engineering firm which at his death he still headed. But the New York Hospital attracted his interest in 1908, when he became a member of its governing board, and thenceforward he gave increasingly and unstintedly of his time to its direction. He became its twenty-sixth president in 1937. The old New York Hospital which many New Yorkers can still recall in its site in West Sixteenth Street, was the second hospital of the country and became one of the most distinguished in respect to personnel the country has known. The problem of removing it and fusing it into the vast medical center on the East River at Sixty-eighth Street was a major task, still to be perfected, in fact. To it Barbey contributed his best energy and skill. The debt of the community to such a devoted working philanthropist is beyond measuring. Hope Farm for children, in Dutchess County, was another on the long list of his charities and ranked next in his interest and active aid.

Geoffrey Parsons
1938 Century Memorials