First Public Medical Botanical Garden: The Elgin Botanic Garden

Manhattan

In 1801, Dr. David Hosack founded the first public medical botanical garden in the United States, the Elgin Botanic Garden, in the area that would one day become Rockefeller Center. The garden contained more than 1,500 species of native and non-native plants for scientific and medical study.

 

NY Firsts - NY Botanic Garden
Painting of the Elgin Botanic Garden. Courtesy of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden.