The buildings, which form a narrow parallelogram with a wing at each end, and a central edifice with towers, front on Fifty-fourth street, facing the south, extending longitudinally from east to west two hundred and eighty feet. The elevations of the several fronts are of square red brick. The central building contains on the first floor the office, the examination room, and appropriate apartments for the physician and the superintendent. On the second floor is the chapel, the distinctive feature of the Hospital. This is rectangular in form, eighty-four by thirty-four feet, with a ceiling forty feet high. The roof is elliptical, with bold traverse ribs resting on corbels. A narrow gallery extends around three sides on a level with the floor of the third story, and so supplements the audience room that several hundred persons are comfortably seated at the Sabbath afternoon service. The wards extend from the central building in either direction, the western wing being devoted to the male, and the eastern to the female patients, respectively. One ward is also appropriated to children, and is a very interesting department. The Hospital has spacious and airy corridors for the exercise of convalescent patients, bath-rooms, closets, and separate apartments for the treatment of the delirious or noisy. The buildings have accommodations for over two hundred patients, and have cost, with their furniture, about $225,000. A rear building contains the apparatus for heating the whole edifice with steam, the cooking, washing, and drying being performed by the same agent. A fan ten feet in diameter for ventilating the Hospital is also driven by the same machinery, capable of discharging 40,000 cubic feet of air per minute. The same machinery carries the water to the tanks in the attic, from whence it is distributed through the building. The projector of the Institution early conceived that its usefulness would be much promoted by placing its wards under the charge of a band of Christian women. Under his own pastorate such a band had originated in 1845, known as the "Sisters of the Holy Communion," being the first community of Protestant "Sisters of Charity" in this country. They were accordingly fitted for the undertaking. The donations of a few wealthy friends enabled the Sisters in 1851 to erect a dwelling suited to their use adjoining the Church of the Holy Communion; and in 1854 the building adjoining their own was rented, and converted into an infirmary, with fifteen beds. Here the work of St. Luke's Hospital began, and more than two hundred patients were treated ere the opening of the Institution on Fifty-fourth street. The Sisters have had charge of the hospital since its opening, attending to its multiplied toils with scrupulous exactness through all these years, with no financial compensation. Even their apparel is furnished by an arrangement of their own, so that nothing but board is received at the Hospital. No vows bind them to their work nor to each other. It is a voluntary association of unmarried Christian females, somewhat akin to the Lutheran Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, so well known in the hospitals of Germany and Prussia. The Hospital is conducted on the principle of a family. The Superintendent, who is also the chaplain, sustaining the relation of father, and the lady superior that of mother, to the inmates. One of the Sisters has charge of the drug department, and saves the Institution annually the wages of an apothecary.

The ministrations of the gospel, according to the forms of the Protestant Episcopal church, are daily attended to. Scriptures and prayers are read in each ward every morning, and a service is conducted every evening in the chapel, when the doors leading into the long wards are thrown open, and the large organ breathes forth its melody. The regular church service with preaching is conducted every Sabbath morning, and in the afternoon the chapel is thrown open the inhabitants of the neighborhood, who attend in large numbers upon the preaching of the Word.

About eight thousand patients have been treated since the opening of the Hospital, a small fraction of whom only were able to pay their own bills.

More than thirty beds are now supported by a permanent endowment of $3,000 each, and over a score more by annual subscriptions of from two hundred to three hundred dollars each. The board of the patients was long held at four dollars per week, but has since been increased to seven dollars for adults, and four dollars for children.

St. Luke's Hospital, situated in a central and wealthy neighborhood, with its beautifully cultivated lawns and elegant surroundings, if managed with the courtesy and skill that have hitherto characterized it, will long continue one of the finest institutions of the city.