Celebrating Nurses Month: Check Out These Long-Lost Photos of Early VNSNY Nurses!

As we continue our celebration of National Nurses Month, Frontline looks at this year’s theme, “Nurses Make a Difference,” through the lens of history. The fact is, VNSNY nurses have been making a difference in the lives of New Yorkers for 128 years. So what’s changed and what has stayed the same after all these years? A recent treasure trove of photos—featuring VNSNY nurses hard at work—gives us a hint!

The National Institute of Health recently featured the online exhibition Outside/Inside:Immigration, Migration, and Health Care in the United States, which chronicles Lillian Wald’s efforts to support immigrants to New York City, starting with her creation of the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service on New York’s Lower East Side—then the world’s largest immigrant neighborhood—in 1893. Wald realized how visiting nurses could play a crucial role in reducing death rates, helping immigrants adjust to life in the United States, and advocating for the rights of these “strugglers on a foreign soil.”

The exhibition features a wide variety of materials from the late 19th century through the 1940s, all related to health care services for recent arrivals in the United States, including a collection of photos sourced from the U.S. National Library of Medicine that feature VNSNY nurses. While much is known about VNSNY’s origins on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, many of these rare photos offer a fascinating glimpse into the organization’s early efforts to branch out into other parts of the city, namely the Bronx.

Here are some standout photos from the exhibition:

To view more of this treasure trove of photos, click here.