Thank you for your comments regarding the future of the Oregon State Hospital complex. While the City’s Landmarks Commission did give approval to remove several sections of the “J” building that parallel Center Street, the State has also committed to saving the oldest “U” section and to include a museum focusing on the history of the treatment of the mentally ill in our State. The original entrance and fountain will also be restored.

Also a group of architects/historians will be selected to advise the Hospital architects on making a good transition and compatible new structure that will replace the lost buildings.

We have learned from sad losses such as Danvers State Hospital, in Massachusetts and hope those of you who have replied to this site from other States will have an opportunity to visit and see what we have done here.

The open house at the “J” building is still scheduled for September 13.

Time reports that Oregon State Hospital, the psychiatric hospital used to film the Oscar-winning movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is being demolished.

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“One flew east, and one flew west
and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest…”

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Wilbur F. Boothby 1840-1946
Wilbur Boothby was prominent in Salem as a merchant, contractor and supervising architect for nearly fifty years. He prepared plans for the 1878 house of newspaper publisher and banker Asahel Bush. Located in Bushs’ Pasture Park it is now an historical museum and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1872 Boothby took the contract to build the Marion County Courthouse which was later demolished. In 1880 Boothby oversaw the construction of the State’s Insane Asylum Building located in Salem. He served as supervising architect and superintendent of construction of what is now known as the “J” Building. He was also involved in the construction of the old State Capitol and the State Penitentiary.

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Thomas Kirkbride revolutionized the care of the mentally ill, when he was working in Pennsylvania. He conceived the design for mental health care that became the blueprint for the design and construction of the Oregon State Hospital.Thanks to http://uchs.net/HistoricDistricts/kirkbride.html for the below information:

The movement to improve the treatment of the insane during the nineteenth century is an outstanding chapter in the history of American social and humanitarian developments. Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride occupies a prominent position in that story, for he built a hospital for the mentally ill in Philadelphia prior to the Civil War that influenced the construction of similar institutions in thirty-one other states. Furthermore, the concept behind Kirkbride’s hospital, that the insane should be treated with the same personal consideration as other ill people, motivated a new understanding of, and regard for the mentally ill.

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