D-FOB-Johnson H26 LAST RITES At dawn on a gloomy Sunday morning, ...

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LAST RITES At dawn on a gloomy Sunday morning, several ambulances lined up in front of the Jersey City Medical Center to take the last patients from the crumbling facility to the new Medical Center a mile away. A maintenance worker named Leonard Fields stood by and shook his head. "Sad day," he said.

Bill Dauster, a spokesman for Liberty Health, which owns the center, was in a better mood, smiling and bouncing around with a clipboard, making sure patients were bundled up. "Seriously ill patients will go later to avoid the chaos on each floor," he explained. "We're eager to move to the new place."

The Art Deco hospital was being vacated to prepare for massive redevelopment by Metrovest Equities, which plans to convert the eight brick and terracotta buildings into condominiums, commercial property, cultural space and parking garages. The main structures are protected by historical registers and will not be torn down, but the complex has long been considered too big and old to operate as a modern hospital. The exquisite details on the buildings' stepped setbacks, including the fragmented circles, zigzags, decorative chevrons and ornate grillwork will be preserved or recreated.

The outside walls are now blackened with grime, but in 1941 the JCMC was the third-largest hospital in the world and the toast of Jersey City, especially for Mayor Frank Hague, who'd spent money on the project as if it were his own private castle. He included opulent penthouses for doctors, lavish theaters, terrazzo floors, marble wainscoting and brass-handled doors. The center had 99 floors of total health care, but it could never fill all its beds, prompting some to criticize Hague's free-spending administration on this patronage project. Writer David Dayton McKean wrote scathingly about the Hague Machine, "It is practicable to have children literally born into the organization, obligated to it from their first squalling moment... They will no more vote against Hague than against life."

Leonard Fields was born at the hospital, as were many friends and relatives in his neighborhood. For years, the JCMC provided free medical care for those who couldn't afford to pay. "See, the place is special, there was lots of births and deaths here. It's like a sanctuary for us. Sad day is all I can say," says Fields, before scuttling off to the new facility to begin another shift.

The last patient, an older man, was finally wheeled down the ramp out of the hospital by 11 a.m. Watching this, Dauster the spokesman said, "We had our staff meeting this morning at 5 a.m. and said goodbye to the hospital by applauding the old girl." He paused.

"I won't miss her, though." o