The Pasteur Institute on Central Park West at 97th Street

By Pam Tice, member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group
The Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group is grateful to Dr. Bert Hansen of Baruch College, who first told us the tale of the New York Pasteur Institute in a 2015 presentation.

In 19th-century New York, a dog bite by a “mad dog” was a sure way of terrorizing a New Yorker, especially in the summer months. If a snarling, rabid dog with a foaming mouth bit us, within a few weeks, we would die from the disease, hydrophobia. This was an especially fearful event in the summertime.

The scientists of the era, particularly at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, were applying “germ theory” to many diseases, discovering antidotes, and treating patients from around the world. Louis Pasteur was a highly respected scientist who had discovered how to make milk safe to drink by heating it to reduce bacteria. In 1884, he announced a cure for hydrophobia with a series of inoculations that, if taken in time, could prevent the onset of the disease and save the life of the person bitten by a rabid dog.  It wasn’t long before New York City had its own research and treatment facility, the Pasteur Institute, built on Central Park West at 97th Street.

Mad dogs have been scaring humans throughout our history.  A link between rabies, the disease of the dogs, and the summer months was a superstition based on the movement of Sirius, the Dog Star, following the hunter Orion. The star was observed, rising with the sun in the summer months, causing the hottest days in late July and early August: “Dog Days.” The event was thought to exert an evil influence, causing sickness and fevers. The onset of hydrophobia from the mad dog bite was easily connected.  
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In the urban chaos of mid-19th-century New York, with its fast-growing population, garbage-strewn streets, and many unleashed dogs, encountering a snapping dog in a neighborhood was sure to be terrifying.

People grabbed the children and tried to get away from the dog. Maybe a brave man would find a stick and beat it. If a police officer was near, the dog was shot. The New York newspapers knew these incidents made a good story, as did a detailed description of the death of a person who had been bitten, usually some weeks later. In fact, there were not many cases of death after a dog bite, but the news reports made it seem rampant. In a 1908 report in The New York Times, death from hydrophobia was reported as 143 cases, from 1814 to 1905; there were three to seven cases in the mid-years of the century.

The fatal disease hydrophobia first manifested in humans as agitation and restlessness, followed by hallucinations. Painful throat spasms and the inability to swallow liquids, hence the name, as even the smallest amount of liquid caused gagging. It took a few weeks, as the disease worked its way to the brain, so people had time to become terrified between the bite and the onset of symptoms. No one recovered. Another disease, labeled Lyssophobia, could occur when a human imagines hydrophobia and becomes hysterical.  

As early as 1785, New York City enacted laws to control the canine population. There were many dogs in the city, used as watchdogs, hunting dogs, and family pets. There were stray dogs, and they survived, along with many hogs, on the garbage in the streets. In 1811, the city created a Dog Register and Collector, charging a $3 fee to register a dog tagged with a metal collar bearing the owner’s name, and a bounty of 50 cents for anyone who killed a free-roaming or threatening dog. Eventually, some dogs were captured and brought to a pound for three days, giving an owner a chance to reclaim their animal before it faced a sure death, usually by drowning in a cage with others, in the river.

The effort to control dogs, however, was not well-enforced. The 50-cent bounty became a source of income for poor people, especially young boys, who were controlled by bounty-hunting men, becoming a danger to law-abiding dog owners. But in the Victorian era, dogs came to be viewed as a part of a loving family. There was a sense that having youngsters earn money by beating dogs to death was morally wrong and had to stop.

One of the most hated city workers in the poorer neighborhoods was the dog catcher, who came to collect unregistered dogs whose owners could not afford the fee to legally keep their beloved pets. The Upper West Side shanty dwellers fought the dog-catcher when they could.

There would sometimes be a summertime rule requiring all dogs to be muzzled, sparking arguments that it was too harsh on the poor dogs who needed to pant through their open mouths in order to cool down. The summer months seemed to be when mad dogs were most evident, though an attack could occur at any time of year.

The ASPCA was founded in 1866 to care for mistreated horses and, by the 1890s, was contracted by the city to handle the dogs. They put the dog catchers in uniforms, provided wagons, set up a pound to keep the dogs who might have a owner, and helped end the muzzling at the urgency of the dog owners.
The New York newspapers created a huge story in 1885 when several small boys from Newark, New Jersey, who had been bitten by a mad dog were taken to Paris on an ocean steamer, funded by many charitable donations. The story ran for days, covering every detail of the trip and the treatment process. The boys continued to earn money for their families when they returned, as they were put on public display.
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By 1890, a French doctor, Paul Gibier, a student of Pasteur’s, opened a Pasteur Institute on West 10th Street in New York and made the treatment available to the city and the surrounding area. A few years later, Chicago also opened a Pasteur Institute.
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The house on West 10th Street soon proved inadequate for Dr. Gibier’s work. He formed the New York Bacteriological Institute with other New York doctors and continued his investigation into other diseases, including tuberculosis and diphtheria. His hydrophobia patients had to come to the house daily for their 14-days of inoculations. He required space for the animals used in his research, including the rabbits needed to make the hydrophobia vaccine. (The dead rabbit’s spinal cord infected with rabies would be dried and used in a liquid, often veal broth, to produce the vaccine used to cure humans.

In 1892, Dr. Gibier announced that he would move the Pasteur Institute to a new building under construction at the corner of Central Park West and 97th Street, where he would hold a long-term lease.

Opened in 1893, the new six-story building was constructed of yellowish brick trimmed with limestone, on a lot measuring 100 feet on 97th Street and 25 feet on Central Park West. There was space to house 40 patients, and, on the upper floors and the roof, the animals: dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, goats, white rats, and chickens.  A farm in Bayside, New York, was added soon after to accommodate more animals, including horses.

​Poor patients at the Pasteur Institute were treated free of charge, with New York State allocating funds to cover their costs. People came from New York’s neighborhoods, from surrounding states, and a few from South America. Each case required an assessment: was the “mad dog” actually carrying rabies? If the dead dog (or its head) could be brought to the Institute so that Dr. Gibier could test its brain, the answer would be assured. If someone else the dog had bitten had died, that would have provided an answer also. In a few cases, the Doctor had to turn down a patient who had waited too long to start treatment, knowing it was futile.
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Sometimes Dr. Gibier took in a patient with a mental condition, like the man from West 105th Street who had grown anxious and despondent after being bitten by a dog three months earlier, and tried to commit suicide, but failed, by shooting himself in the head. Attempting suicide was a crime in 1894, so he was arraigned in court, promised not to do it again, and was sent to the Pasteur Institute.
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Dr. Gibier also developed a supply of the new diphtheria serum, which was discovered at the Institute in Paris in 1894. This antitoxin serum was produced from horses kept at the Bayside farm. Gibier was able to make enough to send it to New Orleans in late 1894, when an epidemic broke out. He also treated a few New York children who were brought to the Institute.

As the final years of the 19th century unfolded, the Institute on Central Park West became inadequate for Dr. Gibier’s work. In fact, there were not many patients with dog bites, and his laboratory needed animals that could not be adequately housed there. Dr. Gibier bought 200 acres in Rockland County, near Suffern, and planned a facility with barns to house the animals and a sanitarium for the humans. He was determined to find a way to heal tuberculosis, and he added cancer to his list. He also wanted to keep animals, now including cows and sheep, in a controlled environment where he could study their heredity and how resistance to a disease could be built.

The Institute moved upstate in 1898 but set up an “intake” center on West 23rd Street, in what had been the actress Lily Langtry’s former home, which also took the name Pasteur Institute.

In 1900, Dr. Gibier was killed in a carriage accident near his upstate facility when his horses were frightened by a nearby firecracker. His nephew, Dr. George Gibier-Renaud, sold off the upstate facility and continued operating the 23rd Street Institute. He became involved in a treatment for tuberculosis that also happened in our neighborhood, a story for another post. The Institute closed when Dr. Gibier-Renaud joined the Overseas Medical Corps and was sent to France during World War I.

As the new century opened, the New York City Health Department became more involved in the treatment of patients who had been bitten by rabid dogs, and soon the city’s hospitals offered the inoculations. In the 1920s, a rabies vaccination for dogs was discovered and was required for all dogs registered in New York. The last rabid dog reported in New York City was in 1954. Today, you’re more likely to get rabies after being bitten by a rabid raccoon.
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The Pasteur Institute on Central Park West was converted into apartments and renamed the Cornell Apartments. Eventually, the lot became part of the Park West Village development of the early 1960s, and the building 372 Central Park West was located there.