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`Cuckoo's Nest' hospital to be torn down
The set of the film 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', Oregon State Hospital, is going to be torn down. Most of the dilapidated, 125 year-old building will be torn down and replaced this fall.
Although mean Nurse Ratched was pure fiction, the Oregon State Hospital has struggled with some very real troubles over the years, including overcrowding, crumbling floors and ceilings, outbreaks of scabies and stomach flu, sexual abuse of children by staff members, and patient-on-patient assaults.
Politicians had been talking for years about the need to replace the hospital, but didn't get serious about it until a group of legislators made a grim discovery during a 2004 tour: the cremated remains of 3,600 mental patients in corroding copper canisters in a storage room. The lawmakers were stunned.
"Nobody said anything to anybody," said Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney, who dubbed the chamber "the room of lost souls."
The remains belonged to patients who died at the hospital from the late 1880s to the mid-1970s, when mental illness was considered so shameful that many patients were all but abandoned by their families in institutions.
"It just created such an emotional momentum" for replacing the hospital, said Courtney, who led the effort to build a new institution.
Although "Cuckoo's Nest" was filmed here, neither the movie nor the 1962 Ken Kesey novel on which it was based makes any specific references to Oregon State Hospital. Kesey drew on his experiences working at a veterans hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., and set his satirical story at an unnamed institution in Oregon.
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 16:27 on August 21st, 2008
I have some things to say about the state hospital.
I'm sane but I spent nine months locked away being evaluated at the state hospital.
I'd never seen 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' till years after I got out of the place.
that being said the place is falling apart I was in one of the newer buildings 50-H and after the staff assaulted me and gave me a concussion(It's a some what long story msg me if you really want to know more). I was sent through the under ground tunnels to the building where they filmed 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' I even used the same exercise yard although there was more fence when I was there than in the movie.
the building in question was barely used because it was falling apart every where, they only used a couple of floors on one side of the building the rest was abandoned as far as I could ever find out. I couldn't go exploring after all I was a patient.
The old style construction was cool to look at though and the tunnels that run under salem are interesting as well but spending the money to build a new hospital is kind of a waste since most mentally ill people never make it to the state hospital they end up in one of the state prisons plus if you do get sent to the state hospital you get the maxium sentance for what ever you were acussed of doing, I.E. if you would normaly do one year for some thing but the max is five years you get five years with no good time plus as an added bonus they can extend it for as long as they like even after you get out and get your own job and house they can still at any time come and take you back with out a court trial.
I think the whole system they have in place for dealing with mental illness is out dated and they should be focusing on that and not the buildings.