The modernization project completed in 2014 created a new 450,000-square-foot state-of-the-art health care center;[6] and 85 new nursing home beds (increasing the total to 295) for The Residence at Gouverneur Court, a modern skilled nursing facility with rehabilitative medicine, long-term care, wound management, and hospice services.

[5] Gouverneur also has three community health centers below 14th Street in Manhattan, and offers mobile medical and dental vans to bring assistance directly to those with difficulty accessing services.

It was New York City's 19th municipal hospital,[10] serving residents of the Lower East Side, a neighborhood that was at the time expanding with European immigration.

[11] It was the first public hospital in the United States to create a tuberculosis clinic, and the first to employ a female ambulance surgeon, Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer.

[13] This building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 29, 1982, and became an assisted living residence called Gouverneur Court in 1994.

In 1940, Gouverneur's Dr. George A. Baehr organized a prepaid medical plan for low-income patients, which ultimately evolved into HIP.

A 14-story, 216-bed hospital with an emergency room and outpatient clinics, the new building served Little Italy, Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

[2] The modernization project was completed in 2014, making the building thirteen stories high, with a new eight-story tower to serve as the nursing home.