The history of the Community Hospital at Dobbs Ferry is a proud story of how concerned citizens worked together to provide modern health and life-saving services for their families, neighbors and friends.

Beginning in 1893 when, thanks to the effort and monetary support of Anne Langdon, the first Hospital at Dobbs Ferry was built. It had only four beds-­ three for adults and one for a child. There was one doctor, one nurse and a small stable for the horse-drawn emergency carriage.

It wasn't long before the community's needs outgrew the small Hospital.

In 1899, a Hospital Association was formed comprised of outstanding local citizens with such familiar names as Villard, Masters, Brown, McComb, Judson and Gould, who sought donations to support expansion of the Hospital.

By 1903, the Hospital had a new home with 20 medical, surgical and obstetrical beds, an operating room, a sizable medical staff, and a Governing Board to look out for its future. New wings were built in 1922 and 1952. Before long the Hospital had grown to 50 patient beds, an emergency room, laboratory and radiology departments, an active operating room, pharmacy, and all the necessary support services.

By the early 1970s, Hospital Trustees, Medical Staff, Administration, Employees and Volunteers worked long and hard with a large group of committed citizens and a succession of dedicated specialists to plan a Community Hospital.

Those many years of planning came to fruition in 1984, when financing was approved for construction of a new $15 million state-of-the-art Community Hospital at Dobbs Ferry. Construction was completed in early 1987, and the new Community Hospital officially opened its doors in June of that year. The new building featured 50 inpatient beds, three operating rooms, seven-bay emergency center, ambulatory surgery unit, computerized diagnostic library, radiology services and an intensive care unit containing the most advanced cardiac monitoring and life-support systems.

But there's more to building a great community hospital than just bricks and mortar. The new Hospital conducted a hospital-wide quality enhancement review that resulted in significant changes in personnel, policies and practices. Attracted by the Hospital's commitment to a new era of quality health care, more than 100 physicians, many of them associated with major medical institutions, applied to join the Hospital's medical staff.

It was truly the start of a new era for the Hospital ­ new building, new equipment, new services, new doctors, new professional staff, new Quality Assurance programs and a new commitment to providing the community with the finest in health care services.

In 2002, St. John's bought the buildings and property of Community Hospital at Dobbs Ferry and under a management contract the smallest hospital in Westchester thrived. New programs and services were offered and many new physicians joined the medical staff.  In late, 2006, Community Hospital at Dobbs Ferry was named on the Berger Commission's Closure List (New York State). After a huge public outcry and eighteen months of battling the order, Community Hospital was saved. On April 1, 2009, it officially became the Dobbs Ferry Pavilion of St. John's Riverside Hospital, preserving its outstanding emergency services and the other medical and surgical programs that the community had come to depend on.

For more than 140 years St. John's Riverside Hospital has strived to thoroughly fulfill its commitment to the residents of the City of Yonkers and southern Westchester, continuing a tradition of providing multi-generational care to families.