Classon Avenue, east side, north from Prospect Place, showing the Jewish Hospital, 1941.
Brooklyn Jewish Hospital was organized 1901 and its building was dedicated in 1903. The original building seen here dates (at least in part) to 1894 when the Memorial Hospital for Women–a homeopathic hospital–moved to this location from a pair of houses on Pacific Street. That hospital, originally organized in 1881 as the Brooklyn Women’s Hospital and Dispensary, was cofounded by Susan McKinney Steward, the first African American doctor in New York State. The Memorial Hospital (whose mission was to "furnish medical and surgical advice and treatment by women physicians to women and children") was sold to the Jewish Hospital for debt in 1903.
This structure was only the first of a number of buildings constructed for the hospital. Most of the other facilities were built in 1927 and a few in the 1950s. Einstein was a surgery patient here in the 1950s.
By 1979 the hospital was bankrupt and merged with another neighborhood hospital, St. John's Hospital in Bed-Stuy, becoming Interfaith Medical Center. By 2000 the buildings had been purchased by a developer and were being converted to housing. The Classon Avenue building was converted first but the sign for the hospital still remains over the door.
The structure seen emerging from the top floor window is likely just a garbage chute.