In the year of Grant's diagnosis, John Jacob Astor III, Elizabeth H. Cullum, John E. Parsons, Thomas A. Emmet, Joseph W. Drexel and other prominent New Yorkers laid the cornerstone for the New York Cancer Hospital, the country's first to devote itself exclusively to the care of cancer patients.
In 1890 the hospital was expanded south, and in both sections Haight designed circular wards, about 40 feet in diameter, in part to facilitate better observation by a nurse at a central desk and in part because the design offered more space between the heads of the beds.