As specialties and the medical staff expanded, the need grew for highly advanced new surgical operating rooms and improved facilities — and Henry Posner Jr., Helen Posner, and the Posner family stepped up with a historic gift in memory of their son and brother, Robert Posner. Dedicated in 2003, Posner Tower enabled UPMC Shadyside to expand, renovate, and upgrade its physical plant and programs in unprecedented ways.

Henry Posner Jr., who graduated in the same Princeton class as Henry Hillman and became a scientist with the Manhattan Project during World War II, amassed a business fortune and gave most of it away to benefit education and health care.

“The exceptional gift of Posner Tower has created an environment dedicated to great patient care,” said Mark Laskow, at the time chair of Shadyside Hospital Foundation.

Family-friendly Giving Comes from Personal Experience

After spending time in the family waiting areas while her husband, Hans, was a patient in the ICU in 2007, Leslie Fleischner knew the space needed a facelift. “It was dark and dreary,” she remembered. “The furniture was uncomfortable. The surroundings certainly did not make worried families feel hopeful.”

When Hans recovered, Leslie personally worked with Shadyside Hospital Foundation and the hospital to transform three windowless rooms into warm, welcoming places with large, comfortable chairs, good light for reading, a big round table for puzzles and games, and even reclining chairs where tired family members can rest.

“I know how worried and stressed you feel when someone you love is in the ICU, and I hoped we could help make a difficult time just a little easier for people,” she said.

“We have had very good experiences at Shadyside Hospital,” Hans commented at the time. “One of the things that especially appeals to us about Shadyside is its friendliness.”

After Hans died at age 94 in 2021, Leslie again worked with the Foundation and the hospital to remodel a family waiting room, this time personally selecting the art as well as the furnishings. She even rearranged the floor plan to make the space more inviting.

“We have believed in giving with a warm hand and have been gratified to help out people at Shadyside. And we have appreciated how Shadyside Hospital Foundation has helped us fulfill our hopes and ideas.”

What does a hospital do when poison ivy threatens your beautiful campus — and your patients?

You can’t spray. That would not be safe for people who are immuno-compromised.
You can’t send your grounds crew in Tyvek suits down dangerously steep hillsides to pull it out.

Roberta Keifer, grounds foreman at UPMC Shadyside, discovered the answer: goats. Goats love poison ivy and can eat it with no ill effects. With a grant from Shadyside Hospital Foundation, Allegheny GoatScape arrived with a herd of nine happy, eco-friendly munchers, guarded by Hobo, a miniature donkey. They went to work on their poison ivy banquet, eating the invader down
 to the ground.

Beyond the satisfaction of solving a threatening problem safely and sustainably, the grounds crew won several innovation awards at the 2019 Quality Fair.

Investing in Green

Shadyside’s campus has always been known for its attractive landscaping and greenery. The Foundation built on this legacy in 2015 by raising more than $150,000 toward a “Living Wall” to camouflage noise and unsightly power plant machinery across from the Emergency Department.

The Enduring Gifts of a Japanese Friendship

In the late 1980s, the innovations of Shadyside Hospital’s nurses attracted nurses from Japan to learn from their American colleagues. At the heart of this partnership was the uniquely dedicated and inventive Dr. Kazuo Kodera of Japan. “Through our experience with this hospital, we have learned what nurses should be,” Dr. Kodera once said.

To honor Shadyside’s advances in patient care, he personally chose and donated 55 cherry blossom trees that turn the UPMC Shadyside campus into a cloud of pink and white each spring. Later, he worked with a garden master in Japan to design a Japanese garden at the hospital’s main entrance, even choosing the rocks to be shipped to Pittsburgh. Patients, families, and Shadyside staff can de-stress in this soothing space, so full of a sense of peace, kindness, and generosity.

“This is a small return to Shadyside Hospital,” Dr. Kodera said. “Particularly the nurses of Shadyside.”

Shinya’s garden

Tragedy strengthened the Japanese bond in 1995. Twenty-six-year-old Shinya Matsudaira of Japan was studying journalism at Point Park University when he developed a rare and aggressive cancer. His parents flew to his side, and their deep appreciation for the care, respect, and affection their son received touched the hearts of doctors, nurses, and administrators.

Even through their grief, Kazuo and
 Keiko Matsudaira hoped to memorialize
 their son and honor the people of Shadyside. With Shadyside Hospital Foundation and
 Dr. Kodera, they contributed funds for a second, smaller garden, as well as a set of rare Japanese prints that now hang in the hallway of Posner Tower.

Across oceans

Mark Meyer, MD, chief of the Division of Family and Community Medicine, leads an ongoing medical collaboration with Japanese family medicine physicians at Aso Iizuka Hospital, one of Japan’s largest medical centers.

“Our program trained Mike Hashimoto, one of the earliest American board-certified family medicine physicians in Japan — starting our proud tradition of helping to train some of the core doctors moving family medicine forward as a specialty there,” states Dr. Meyer, the son of a Presbyterian minister and grandson of missionaries in southeast Asia.

And that is how, starting with a gift of trees, Shadyside Hospital Foundation has crossed oceans to advance exceptional health care.

Artful Welcomes

Psychologists know that art has the potential to add both beauty
 and meaning to public places. In health care settings, art provides a positive distraction that can ease stress for patients, caregivers, and staff. A newly emerging field, neuroaesthetics, even investigates how the human brain responds to beauty.

Now Shadyside Hospital Foundation has embarked on a major new funding project, bringing art to enhance the experience of everyone who enters the hospital. Developing the Art Plan for Shadyside are Sandra Rader, hospital president; John Krolicki, vice president for Facilities and Support Services; Amy McLaughlin, chief nursing officer and vice president of Patient Care Services; and Jennifer March, executive director of the Foundation. The recently retired Kitty Zell, formerly vice president, Operations, also served on the team that works with Renee Piechocki, art consultant, and Dana McCollum, senior interior designer.

Three new pieces created especially for Shadyside by local artists were installed in 2025, and more are on the way.