Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children

Wikipedia: Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children (Portland, Oregon)

The Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children, also known as Old Shriners Children's Hospital, was a historic building in Portland, Oregon, United States, built in 1923. It was designed in Colonial Revival style with aspects of the Georgian Revival style subtype. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, and removed in 2011, after being deconstructed in 2004. The hospital moved to Marquam Hill in 1983, and the old site remained vacant until 2005 when it was demolished and an affordable living apartment complex, Columbia Knoll, was built on the site.

A. F. Litt, June 14, 2022

It's easy to make assumptions about a place until you learn more about its history. Below, I wrote about driving by this hospital after it was abandoned and called it creepy. Sure, almost any abandoned building will give off a creepy vibe, places where lives were once lived, but no longer, with those memories fading, lost under the dust from the crumbling walls...

Couple that with a few horror film tropes and, not to forget, the fact that Oregon did have some very, very dark institutions back in the day, and it's easy to see how one can make assumptions.

From the recent post on Forgotten Oregon (below), it seems as if this place did not have that dark of a history, after all.

Craig Addams, Forgotten Oregon, December 3, 2015

Portland's SHRINERS HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN … was dedicated December 9, 1923. The Georgian-style brick building served that purpose for 60 years on the ten acre site.

On May 1, 1983 "Shriners Hospital" moved into their new $20 Million facility on Marquam Hill … where the hospital became part of the Oregon Health & Science University complex.

In 1986 the old hospital became the DE PAUL CENTER until 1987. After that, it became vacant. In 2002 the building was demolished.

Comment by Delores Brown, December 3, 2013

I visited the old hospital yearly until the new one opened. The building was beautiful. The shoe and brace and orthotics were in the basement I think. My son had surgery there and stayed for such a looong time. At no cost to me! Such a blessing for free care!

Forgotten Oregon, June 12, 2022

Post by Jimmy Fox, June 12, 2022

Does anyone have pictures of the old Shriners Hospital on 82nd and Sandy?? Spent a lot of my childhood there and have no pictures except my memories. Thank you.

Comment by Mikel Tosch, June 12, 2022

I spent lots of time there from the early 50s through the early 60s. I was about 3 and was featured in a photo shoot with Danny Kay for a publication that Shriners used for promotional purposes. I’ll see if I can find it. If I remember correctly there were some great shots of the hospital which I’d be happy to post.

Comment by Robin Beyer-Gordon, June 12, 2022

Teresa Lillian Mcgrath by chance do you know where the doll house that was in the lobby end up at?

Comment by Teresa Lillian McGrath, June 12, 2022

Robin Beyer-Gordon sorry, i don't....good luck

Comment by Jerry Tyler Wheeler, June 12, 2022

I went there a few times myself. Injured my legs in a kitchen drawer trying to reach the cupboard. I was 2 didn't walk again until about 4

Comment by Patricia Cline Anderson, June 12, 2022

Jerry Tyler Wheeler - are you still trying to climb mountains?

Comment by Jimmy Fox, June 12, 2022

Patricia Cline Anderson - I never met a kid there that was able to have the choice. We all climbed and we continue to for the rest of our lives, because that is the choice we are given. I never saw any whiners in that place. Quitting is not an option for some people. Hope springs eternal, thank God. Adversity builds character so don't feel sorry.

Comment by Angie Arndt - Sills, June 13, 2022

My sister did a lot of her growing up there too! She told me stories of how some of the gals snuck out and crossed Sandy to a mini mart type store.

Comment by Tammi Carlin-Hart, June 13, 2022

I heard that was one of the most haunted buildings in Portland.

Comment by Jimmy Fox, June 13, 2022

No it was not. I spent years there. That's ridiculous, I assure you. The tortured souls in that building were very much alive.

Lee Perlman, "Hospital comes down after five years of struggle," The Mid County Memo

It was fitting that the official “groundbreaking” for the Columbia Knoll housing development, on the old Shriner’s Hospital for Crippled Children property, occurred more than a month after work had begun. Everything about this project has taken longer than expected.

Achieving an imperfect but meaningful consensus among neighbors took awhile. Obtaining permission to demolish the 1926 Shriner’s Hospital building, a landmark on the National Registry of Historic Places, took longer. Putting together the $48 million in financing took longest of all. It has been five years in all. And even now, some doubts remain.

A. F. Litt, April 8, 2020

Between 2002 and 2004, a lifetime ago, I drove by this very abandoned, very creepy hospital twice a day and I always meant to stop and take some pictures. But I was working long hours, had small children and a very sick wife at home, and never quite got around to it. Then I moved from living down on the slough, off Sandy, to Gresham. My commute changed, some years sped by, and I forgot all about this super photogenic relic of times passed until I happened to drive by one day and it was gone, replaced by a modern senior living facility.

So much time had passed that the memory of the old hospital was almost like the faint echo of a mostly forgotten dream in my mind. In fact, I found myself questioning whether or not it was even a real memory or not. And then I quickly forgot about it again.

More time passed and, probably after driving by again, I remembered it again, and this time I did some research. I thought it was for a blog post, but I searched a couple times today and could not find anything on Rubble about it. So, maybe it was just searching and looking at some photos folks had posted and that was it. I wish I could find those photos now. Maybe further searching, after the rebuild, will turn up more images.

Back then, this project was a long way off and all I knew was that this was a creepy old building that I liked. Maybe if I knew it was an abandoned hospital for "crippled children" I would have been more motivated to get a camera on it, the only thing better than that would be if it were once an old psychiatric hospital sitting up on the hill like that. Haunted? How could it not be? Even if you don't believe in actual ghosts.

Anyway, why the long musing about a place that lies on the edges of my memory? Well, that is exactly why I have spent so much time on this project over the years. Even today, working on the pages for this section of the highway, I almost forgot to include this page. It was the last one I added for Rocky Butte. These places fade over time, once they are torn down, torn up, blown up, and/or left to slumber under the duff of years and decades...

Pretty soon, it will be hard to find anything on these old places at all. I know, even since starting this project, there are places I meant to photograph that are gone forever, a couple old motels on Sandy and Stark that have been torn down, and old motel sign taken out last year on Powell, when they were widening the road, that I would have liked a photo of for the future Mt. Hood Loop project... I was busy, too busy, today to even worry about it. I forgot to get my camera ready until it was too late. I'll get it tomorrow. It's raining and I don't want to get off the bus or out of my car... So many excuses.

Luckily, I've caught a lot of what has been lost since I started this back in 2013. Old fragments of highway, covered in moss and time, scraped clean and paved over for the State Trail, the Gasco Building being ripped to shreds, and so on and so forth... But so much was already gone before I ever started this. Including this place.

And so it goes... But a bunch of us are doing our best to record what history is left in these places, to get it down before it is gone, now, when it is just an old sign or a dilapidated old building barely retaining any clues as to its past purpose, and before it is a lost memory, an opportunity let slide, holding on to nothing but loss and regret for what once was, never to be again.

Unfortunately, there is a certain type of sadness to this sort of work. Even when places are restored or preserved, they never quite are what they once were, and trying to capture, preserve and share that sense of what was for the future is what this type of work is all about.

CLICK HERE to continue exploring the highway