Former Mayor David Dinkins was hospitalized with a serious bout of pneumonia, but is now doing better.
Dinkins, 88, confirmed to the Daily News that he was at New York Presbyterian Hospital with a lung infection.
Always the gentlemen, he said, “I can’t talk right now. I’m with the doctors.”
A source close to him said he was in the intensive care unit, but doing “better.”
He was also hospitalized at the east side Manhattan facility for pneumonia in 2013 after having trouble breathing.
When news of his latest health problem broke, Mayor de Blasio tweeted the Daily News story about his hospitalization and wrote, “Get Well, Mayor Dinkins!”
De Blasio worked as an aide for Dinkins during his term as mayor, along with the city’s future First Lady. Chirlane McCray was a speechwriter for Dinkins.
Although he only served for one term, Dinkins will go down in the history books as the city’s first – and so far only – black mayor. He is also famous for insituting the “Safe Streets, Safe City” program, which boosted the number of cops and is credited with helping drive down crime from its peak in the 1990s. And he inked the deal with Disney to open a theater in Times Square — laying the groundwork for the then-seedy area’s eventual transformation — and for a new stadium in Flushing Meadows, Queens to be home of the U.S. Open.
Last year, de Blasio ordered the lime-stone clad Municipal building be renamed in his honor.
