Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Memorial Hospital, created in 1884, moved to a new facility on land donated by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in 1939 and was renamed Memorial Hospital for the Treatment of Cancer and Allied Diseases. The RBF began supporting the Hospital in 1946 with a $15,000 grant to the general budget, followed by a $10,000 contribution to the building fund in 1949, just as the Sloan Kettering Institute, dedicated to biomedical research on cancer, was established next door. By the 1960s, the two institutions merged in order to integrate research with direct patient care, and became Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). The Center was a special interest of founding RBF trustee Laurance Rockefeller, who chaired its executive committee and spearheaded its fundraising. In subsequent decades, the Fund steadily increased its support, giving several million dollars to the Research Teaching Fund, the 75^th Anniversary Fund, and over $2 million in the 1970s toward MSKCC’s upgrade to a state-of-the-art research, education, and patient services complex.