States Civil War, which generated a major need for health related occupations. As a result, the college was founded and opened as the Homeopathic Medical College of the State of New York on the corner of 20th Street and Third Avenue, near Union Square in Manhattan. In the first semester there were 59 students and 8 professors. The college adopted the name New York Homeopathic Medical College in 1869 and, in 1887, New York Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital. The sister institution known as the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women was founded a few years later in 1863 by Clemence Lozier. In 1867, it graduated Emily Stowe, the first female physician to practice in Canada. Three years later in 1870, Susan McKinney Steward graduated as the first African-American female physician in New York State. One of its later graduates, Adelaide Wallerstein in the class of 1905, also held a law degree, and founded the East Side Clinic for Children in 1906. When the Women's College closed in 1918, its students transferred to New York Medical College. In 1875, Metropolitan Hospital Center opened as a municipal facility on Ward's Island, staffed largely by the faculty of New York Medical College. As a university hospital of New York Medical College, this relationship is among the nation's oldest continuing affiliations between a private medical school and a public hospital. Built by New York Medical College in 1889, the Flower Free Surgical Hospital, was the first teaching hospital in the United States to be owned by a medical college. It was constructed at York Avenue and 63rd Street with funds given largely by Congressman Roswell P. Flower, later governor of New York. In 1908 the college changed its name to New York Homeopathic Medical College and Flower Hospital. In 1928 the college was the first medical school in the nation to establish a minority scholarship program. By 1935, the college had transferred its outpatient activities to the Fifth Avenue Hospital at Fifth Avenue and 106th Street. The college (including Flower Hospital) and Fifth Avenue Hospital merged in 1938 and became New York Medical College, Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals. In 1972, New York Medical College moved to Valhalla, at the invitation of the Westchester County government, which desired to build an academic medical center. Completed in 1977, Westchester Medical Center is currently the main academic medical center of the college. The