Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic
The Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic was a hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, United States. It was founded by an endowment bestowed by Payne Whitney upon his death. Whitney was an American businessman and member of the influential Whitney family. An eight-story free-standing hospital was constructed, and was affiliated with Cornell University's medical school, now called Weill Cornell Medicine, and with New York Hospital, now New York–Presbyterian Hospital, before its opening.
Payne Whitney was a large donor to the Hospital and Medical College, and it has been an issue of long speculation why he chose a psychiatric building to be his primary naming opportunity at New York-Cornell.
The Payne Whitney building itself was torn down in the early 1990s to make way for an expansion of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital over the FDR Drive. Since that time, all clinical and research services at the two primary Cornell psychiatric campuses—in Manhattan and in White Plains, New York—have been named after Payne Whitney. The clinic also has an outpatient and Continuing Day Treatment Program in an off-campus building at East 61st Street and York Avenue on the Upper East Side.
Notable people
Payne Whitney Clinic and NYP / Weill Cornell have been home to some of the most notable psychiatrists in the country. Current psychiatrists and psychologists include Jack Barchas, Robert Michels, Otto F. Kernberg, James Kocsis, George Makari, Michael Posner, William Breitbart, and Theodore Shapiro.Noted staff have included Arnold Cooper, Frederic Flach, Benjamin Spock, Gerald Klerman, Robert Millman, Louis Jolyon West, David Silbersweig, Harry Tiebout, Mary Jane Sherfey, Helen Singer Kaplan, Allen Frances, and Paul McHugh. Payne Whitney has also been the "voluntary faculty" home to Roy Schafer, Richard Isay, Michael Perelman, Gail Saltz, and Daniel Stern, and the recent home of such senior scholars as David A. Hamburg and Beatrix Hamburg.