General Content
On 31 March 1975, Geri-Care Inc. transferred the property to the EMA Holding Company. The Rochester Fire Department responded to the address on August 13, 1975, where a small fire had started while workers were dismantling the building. The property would remain empty for four years. In July 1979, the property was sold to the Rochester Automobile Dealers Association. Today, the modern brick office building rising high off the street at 179 Lake Avenue is Paradigm Environmental.
The Lee Private Hospital’s original stable became the resident’s garage at 10 Jones Avenue. Jagged remnants of the northwest wall from the old Nurses’ quarters and the Decarr Supervised Boarding Home still remain, protruding out from the garage’s east wall. The property seems much too small to have been the center of so much history.
From 1898 until 1971, the hospital at 179 Lake Avenue became a center of community service in Northwest Rochester. Dr. Lee’s commitment to the community, service to his patients, and contribution to the advancement of the treatment of cancer were remarkable. The use of nuclear medicine and x-ray technology no doubt saved many lives that otherwise might not have survived. With the opening of the free radium treatment clinic on Fridays, Dr. Lee demonstrated his commitment to his community and his strong conviction that regardless of wealth or social status, all people deserved the best medical care possible.
Doctor Charles Teresi followed Dr. Lee’s example of community service by his life-long devotion to his hospital and its patients that would come to represent an expression of his love for his country and his family, and commitment to his community. Teresi’s personal commitment to care for his family would be reflected to his patients by the hospital’s later geriatric focus. The hospital, in its later years, became a place where the elderly lived their final years. With the Doctor’s death in 1961, the hospital continued to serve the community as the Elms Nursing home. The hospital’s demolition in 1975 ended its legacy of service to the Rochester community. However, the memory of the hospital’s contribution to Rochester lives on in the personal memories and photographs of the Hospital at 179 Lake Avenue.