In all these years of thinking about James Thurber’s life and work I’ve never thought about exactly where he passed away. I knew it was in a hospital in Manhattan, and for decades that seemed to be enough to know. Checking in this morning with Burton Bernstein’s Thurber biography, Harrison Kinney’s Thurber biography, and Thurber’s New York Times obit, all agree Thurber breathed his last in Doctors Hospital (his last words, according to his wife, Helen: “God bless…God damn”).
“Doctors Hospital” did not sound at all familiar to me. I grew up just outside of Manhattan, lived on the island itself for a few years, and have maintained a close relationship with it since (it being the home of The New Yorker). Not once, not ever, did I ever hear, or have I heard anyone mention Doctors Hospital. In less than a minute, the internet sorted it all out for me. Doctors Hospital no longer exists.
This is a postcard, found online showing what it looked like in 1953:
As you can see, it was located at 87th Street and East End Avenue — that’s just across the street from Carl Schurz Park and Gracie Mansion. With this new information in mind, I’ll no longer drive through that neighborhood focused solely on getting to wherever it is I’m going to that day. I’ll think of Thurber.
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Thurber’s A-Z Entry:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website