Hosp to be named for RBG
‘An obvious fit’ in Brooklyn for late top court justice
A newly built Brooklyn hospital will be named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Daily News has learned, and the late Supreme Court justice’s daughter held it up as an “important” tribute to her mother’s New York City roots.
The 11-story facility, which will be part of the sprawling Coney Island Hospital campus, got the all-clear to be named after Ginsburg in a unanimous vote by the NYC Health + Hospitals Board of Directors on Thursday afternoon, a spokesman for the public hospital system confirmed.
Jane Ginsburg, the late justice’s only daughter, said her entire family is grateful for the decision.
“The Justice’s family is honored that this important public hospital is building on our mother and grandmother’s
Brooklyn roots by giving her name to an institution that will serve so many of South Brooklyn’s health needs,” she said in a statement to The News.
In addition to the Ginsburg building, the board voted to rename the Coney Island Hospital campus South Brooklyn Health, the spokesman, Chris Miller, said.
The Ginsburg hospital is expected to open in the summer of 2022. It was constructed with $922 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of a long-running project to repair and retrofit buildings and other structures damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Svetlana Lipyanskaya, the CEO of the Coney Island campus, said it was like an “ah-ha moment” when Ginsburg’s name first came up in conversations last year about what to name the new building.
“She had just passed away when talk came up about a name,” Lipyanskaya said in an interview. “She represents a story that’s similar to a lot of our patients and our staff — a little girl from an immigrant community who rose to greatness — so it seemed like an obvious fit. There are so many stories of that around here.”
Ginsburg, who was born and raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn, died on Sept. 18, 2020 following a long battle with cancer. She was 87.
The trailblazing liberal, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 as just the second female Supreme Court justice in history, has been honored across the city since her death.
A bronze statue of the late justice was unveiled in downtown Brooklyn this spring, and March 15, her birthday, has been declared Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Day in Brooklyn.