George Henry Gay was a House Pupil in surgery in 1844. He was elected a visiting surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1854 and died in 1882.

The Gay Ward was a one-story outpatient building given anonymously in 1882, in memory of the donor’s deceased friend, Dr. Gay. It was an addition to the south side of the Bigelow Amphitheatre, which was connected by a corridor to the Bulfinch Building. Fittingly, the Wang Ambulatory Care Center was built a century later in the same location.