The 16th-tallest building on YIMBY’s year-end construction countdown is MSK Pavilion, a forthcoming 594-foot-tall inpatient hospital building at 1233 York Avenue in the Lenox Hill section of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Designed in collaboration by CannonDesign and Foster + Partners and developed by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), the 31-story structure will yield 900,000 square feet of cancer care and surgery facilities. Demolition is currently underway on the current occupant of the site, a 23-story building that formerly housed medical student residences and administrative offices. The property is bound by East 67th Street to the north, East 66th Street to the south, and York Avenue and Rockefeller University to the east.
Recent photographs show scaffolding beginning to cover the structure in preparation for its razing. A sidewalk shed encircles the ground floor, and a strip of the northern façade has been removed as interior gutting progresses. YIMBY expects demolition to reach street level at some point in the second half of 2025.
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young.
The rendering in the main photo depicts 1233 York Avenue from the East River, previewing a glass curtain wall framed by white mullions, with several mechanical levels clad in gray metal paneling. The structure culminates in a tall bulkhead clad in white paneling.
A two-story sky bridge positioned 77 feet above East 67th Street will provide a connection to the Memorial Hospital Building’s seventh and eight floors.
The skybridge for the MSK Pavilion at 1233 York Avenue. Designed by CannonDesign and Foster + Partners
The facility is expected to contain 200 in-patient rooms, including 60 ICU beds, all with single occupancy and an average scope of 250 to 300 square feet. The 28 operating and procedure rooms are expected to average 650 to 700 square feet. The zoning diagram below shows the scale of MSK Pavilion and the porte cochere spanning between East 66th and East 67th Streets for easier access of ambulatory vehicles.
1233 York Avenue. Designed by CannonDesign and Foster + Partners.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s presence on the Upper East Side can be seen in the following map. The MSK Pavilion is the light-blue box at the southern corner of the main campus.
MSK’s Manhattan campus.
Additional sectional diagrams below break down the use of each floor. Parking space will occupy the three cellar levels, followed by a two-story lobby, 11 floors for surgery, four floors for clinical support, nine levels for inpatient beds, and three mechanical levels at the very top. Three other mechanical floors are interspersed throughout the MSK Pavilion’s height.
1233 York Avenue. Designed by CannonDesign and Foster + Partners.
1233 York Avenue. Designed by CannonDesign and Foster + Partners.
1233 York Avenue. Designed by CannonDesign and Foster + Partners.
MSK has worked with the displaced employees to relocate to nearby communities such as Roosevelt Island, where a large population of the hospital’s staff already lives.
If built to its full scope, the MSK Pavilion will become the second-tallest building on the Upper East Side, surpassed only by Robert A. M. Stern’s 520 Park Avenue on East 60th Street between Park and Madison Avenues.
An anticipated completion date for 1233 York Avenue has not been announced.
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Where are the med students and residents going to live?
Trying re-reading
Relocating to nearby market rate housing and displacing those who previously lived there.
I am unsure how these previous residential zoned buildings are being replaced with medical/office buildings. It’s the same on 79th and 77th.
What a waste of housing-
NYC needs more medical bldgs
God bless the building of a world class cancer center, still, it a bit strange to see the demolition of a ‘perfectly good’ 23-story building, in order to build a ‘perfectly better’ one..
Buildings need to be connected and high tech. Older buildings have life spans and medical-related uses require specialization and new infrastructure. Good job MSK.
SteveS..It’s money. No mega donor gives money unless a need (or name credit, or both) can be shown. Need can be established based on how deep the donors’ pockets are. It’s a budget…if you’re in the black, no need is established until need is created. And that’s why tearing down a relatively new building rather than renovating and repurposing it is so popular with hospitals. Oh yes..the footprint of the Kimmel prostate center which was wedged in mid block on residential 68th St after tearing down a church is missing from the depictions of the MSKCC campus.
@Woodstock vet – Kimmel is noted in the image titled “MSK’s Manhattan Campus”. I’m curious to know which facility in which you would prefer to have your cancer treatment performed. A 1969 building or a state-of-the-art facility built in 2030.
Are you a frigging idiot?! What matters is the doctor and the technology. This particular project may be needed, but hospitals love to demolish perfectly reusable buildings because doctors have huge egos. I am currently being treated in a 70 year old center because the doctors at a brand new super center attached to an “Ivy League” university screwed up royally. The building isn’t what matters you schmuck.
You’re a friendly sort. I am not an architect, but I think if you asked one how feasible it would be to convert a 1969 residential building with standard ceilings into a 2030 surgical pavilion, there would be some chuckles. I wish you well in your treatment.
First, doctors don’t build these hospitals, corporations and administrators do. Second, there is no open land to expand, so they have to tear down existing older buildings. Every hospital does this.
MSKCC has saved me twice. Here’s to saving many, many more.
Please allow hospitals, medical centers, research to build. We need them.
Medicine changes so much so aught the buildings.
Where is the shadow study putting the no in my back yard New York City Public Elementary School 183 in darkness forever
Where will the flammable Oxygen Farm Oxygen and Nitrogen Gas Tanks be located
50 feet away from combustible engines as required by city state federal law
Please allow hospitals, medical centers, research, universities to expand. This is needed in our city.
When patients are in the hospital, they don’t want to lie down and watch a movie series. They want to see a doctor and get treatment: Thanks.
Medicine can do more and more, thankfully, to save and prolong the lives of cancer patients. I always think that new hospital buildings have in them new technology that can more effectively treat and save more lives. I’m for the buildng of them.
Once they received their influence money from the billion dollar non profit that pays no taxes, which local elected public official would possibly oppose a 900,000 gross square foot 600 foot tall tower on a 100 foot by 200 foot residentially zoned block and lot ? Incredible that the Public School Playground will be in permanent darkness PS183 Elementary students must not need sunlight or clean air.