Our History

It was the dedication of two Teaneck surgeons and the leadership of a Catholic sister that made Holy Name Medical Center a reality in 1925.

Recognizing the need to serve the sick and indigent of the community, Drs. Frank McCormack and George Pitkin appealed to Mother General Agatha Brown of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace for help in finding a suitable Medical Center site and in providing administrative and nursing staffs. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace had been a presence in New Jersey since 1885, one year after the order was founded in England with the goal of fostering peace and justice in the world.

The Sisters purchased the estate of the late William Walter Phelps and erected the Medical Center there, staffing it with Sisters. At its opening in 1925, Holy Name Medical Center boasted 115 beds. Five years later, a 90-bed clinic building was built to meet the needs of area residents who had been impoverished by the Great Depression.

Teaneck was little more than a rural village then; in all of Bergen County there were some 250,000 inhabitants. With the completion of the George Washington Bridge in 1931 the familiar cornfields and apple orchards began to disappear. A surge of development followed World War II, and the area soon became a thriving residential and business community.

Holy Name thrived as well. In 1955 a second addition was completed: the four-story, 110-bed Marian Pavilion. Fewer than 10 years later two more stories were added to the pavilion. During the 1960s, the west wing of the Marian Building was enlarged by three more units.

Faced again with the threat of overcrowding in the 1980s, the Medical Center complex was once more enlarged with construction of the Breslin/Kennedy Building. With each advancement, the Medical Center has grown, not only in size but in reputation, most recently with the implementation of the Department of Clinical Research and the addition of PET/CT scanning and Respiratory Gating, advanced capabilities that are available in select Medical Centers in the nation.

As the Medical Center celebrates 80 years of caring for generations, we continue to take innovative and formidable steps to become a national model by implementing not only new advanced technologies, but also best practices in building construction and design, medication administration and disaster preparedness. These improvements will allow us to provide each patient with the perfect balance of health care, advanced medical science, quality of life preservation, and a high level of compassion. And as we move forward to pursue new advances and add technologies to the delivery of health care, we are ever mindful of our unwavering commitment to superior patient care - the hallmark of Holy Name Medical Center.