This is where the Rev. Martin Luther Jr. was taken after a Harlem woman stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener.

It was September 20th 1958, and the seven-inch shank nearly severed the civil rights leader’s aorta.

Harlem preservationists say it was here, at this wing of Harlem Hospital where doctors and nurses stabilized him until the surgery that saved his life began three hours later.

“We found out just recently that he was brought into the women’s pavilion,” said Julius Tajiddin, Preserve Harlem’s Legacy.

Julius Tajiddin has launched an online petition demanding the building’s survival.

But New York City Health and Hospitals says doctors operated on King in another building. It plans to tear down the Women’s Pavilion and the Nurses Residence next door to build a state-of-the-art public health laboratory.

"I’m not saying Harlem doesn’t need that but certainly they can preserve these buildings and still bring the health lab here,” said Tajiddin.

Tajiddin argues the Nurses Residence built in 1915 also holds a significant place in black history. The Harlem Hospital School of Nursing School opened eight years later because City Hospitals refused to accept Black Nurses.

“It makes me upset,” said Tajiddin.

But Health and Hospitals counters it was not the first school of nursing to educate black nurses in the nation, and both buildings have irreversible structural damage.

“They’re just one big monolith of limestone,” said Michael Henry Adams, Architectural Historian and resident for 34 years.

Architectural historian Michael Henry Adams says from the solid limestone ionic columns to wrought iron balconies and now broken pediments on the door of the Women’s Pavilion built in 1935 are worth saving.

“They’re not things you see created in architecture today. When you combine that with the association with MLK and how his life was saved. It’s a double tragedy,” said Henry Adams.

New York City Health and Hospitals says it's been transparent about its intentions, presenting to its community advisory board.

Julius Tajiddin has asked the Landmark’s Preservation Commission to consider protecting the targeted buildings, but with the city already approving demolition of the Nurses Residence, the request has little chance of succeeding.