St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Center was a behemoth of a hospital, founded in 1849 in the West Village during a cholera epidemic and serving in countless community tragedies including 9/11. As the first and largest AIDS ward on the East Coast, it was Ground Zero for the epidemic which struck in the 1980s with AIDS patients in a third of its beds. The hospital is no more. The main building has been torn down to make room for a luxury tower and other buildings becoming high-end condos, but plans are underway to build an AIDS memorial in a small triangular park across from where St. Vincent's stood.