Previously affiliated with New York Medical College, as of 2013 it is affiliated with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as a part of the membership in the Mount Sinai Health System. Yearly, several hundred medical students compete for entrance into this institution for training but only seven each year are accepted into the ophthalmology training program and four into the otolaryngology program.
The hospital was founded on August 1, 1820 by Edward Delafield and John Kearney Rodgers, both surgeons who were graduates of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons who did their clinical training at New York Hospital, and, in London, at the London Eye Infirmary.
When they returned to New York in 1818, they made the first survey of eye diseases in the city, and, in response to the lack of eye care provided to the poor except in dire circumstances, opened the New York Eye Infirmary at 45 Chatham Street (which is now 83 Park Row), across from City Hall and near the Five Points neighborhood.
According to wikipedia
