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69 8 County hosPItal, the kkk, kICkBaCk sCandals, and more ConsolIdatIon ProPosals (1909–1927) Multnomah County’s 167 percent increase in population from 1900 to 1920,1 fueled by the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial exposition and a thriving economy, led to a correspondingly greater demand for indigent care at the fourstory victorian mansion at SW Second Avenue and hooker Street that had been converted into a county hospital in 1909. It was designed to house 65 patients, but only four years later daily populations were running between 90 and 110.2 Cots filled the hallways and some patients were hoisted up to the “roof garden,” where canvas awnings provided weather protection.3 Perhaps prompted by criticism from the New York bureau of Municipal research in 1913, the grand juries that performed annual reviews of county facilities in 1914 and 19154 declared the converted mansion to be a firetrap and called for its closure. emma Jones, a nurse who had trained at Cook County hospital in Chicago and became hospital superintendent soon after her arrival in Portland, criticized the building for having no elevators, inadequate fire escapes , no heat during specified hours, only one telephone, and an apparently ineradicable rat infestation.5 Soon after the second grand jury report, County Chairman rufus holman proposed that the county board close the hospital immediately and pay for the treatment of indigent patients at other Portland hospitals. his motion was defeated two to one, though the board did call for the county physician to investigate the prices that other hospitals would charge for such services.6 St. vincent hospital, then at its original site in northwest Portland, offered to take over indigent medical care at a cost of $8 per week per patient, with additional charges for drugs and surgery. the county declined, citing its current daily cost of 78 cents per patient.7 Once the county decided to replace the old mansion, debate erupted over the new location. holman, who had taken the lead on the 70 chapter 8 Columbia river highway and the first Interstate bridge, once again became the key figure. Dr. r. A. J. MacKenzie, dean of the Oregon Medical School, which had its roots in a two-room building in northwest Portland, encouraged holman to consider the medical school’s new site on Marquam hill. twenty acres of that steeply sloping site had been donated in 1917 by the Oregon-Washington railway and Navigation Company. holman convinced county officials to build a new hospital on the medical school site. the agreement he negotiated with Dr. MacKenzie called for the medical school to provide a seven-acre site at no cost to the county, in return for which the county would build and maintain a hospital and allow medical students access to the patients. the medical school agreed to provide medical staff and to take responsibility for all care provided.8 the prolific architect ellis Lawrence, who was based in Portland and eugene, where he was dean of the University of Oregon architecture department, hoped to design the new county hospital. but as he wrote to an associate, “politics robbed us of the County hospital, which went to Sutton and Whitney in spite of all the [university] regents could do.”9 the decision could have been affected by Lawrence’s opinion that the original acreage, given the steep terrain, was not big enough for the county hospital and the medical school; those worries were assuaged in 1924 when the wife of C. S. Jackson, publisher of the Oregon Journal, donated an adjacent 88 acres. the firm of Albert Sutton and harrison Whitney was eminently qualified to undertake the county project. In the medical field, their works in Portland included emanuel hospital, Good Samaritan hospital, and the original Shriners’ hospital in northeast Portland, now demolished. Other notable surviving structures designed in their office include the Portland Masonic temple, now a part of the Portland Art Museum, and the Weatherly building, in its glory days the tallest building east of the Willamette river, both of which were also constructed in the early 1920s. As for Lawrence, he designed the first medical school building , now called MacKenzie hall, and six other buildings on the hilly campus. the Sutton and Whitney design for the new county hospital was in the shape of an h, and was originally intended to house up to five hundred patients. because of high costs, only the first wing was completed in 1923. the original $500,000 cost estimated...

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