Coffined bodies at New York City Morgue waiting for the coroner. A morgue is used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification or removal for autopsy or disposal by burial, cremation or other method. Bellevue Hospital was founded in 1736 and is the oldest public hospital in the US. In 1798, the city purchased Belle Vue farm a property near the East River which had been used to quarantine the sick during yellow fever outbreaks. The hospital was formally named Bellevue Hospital in 1824. NYU faculty began to conduct clinical instruction at the hospital in 1819. In 1849, an amphitheater for clinical teaching and surgery opened. In 1861, the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, the first medical college in NY with connections to a hospital, was founded. By 1873, the nation's first nursing school based on Nightingale's principles opened at Bellevue, followed by the nation's first children's clinic in 1874 and the nation's first emergency pavilion in 1876. Harper's Weekly, 1868. This image has been color enhanced.