Gaines Hall, OHSU

Formerly the Portland Medical Hospital for chronically ill patients, Gaines Hall was first occupied in 1932 as a 75-bed inpatient facility. Obtained by the University of Oregon Medical School (now OHSU) during World War II for use as a nursing student dormitory, Gaines Hall later became the home of OHSU academic programs, offices and classrooms.

Gaines Hall was originally built as the Portland Medical Hospital. Previously located at 634 Lovejoy Street, the Portland Medical Hospital was a 35-bed hospital founded in 1916 by Dr. Noble Wiley Jones to care for chronically ill patients. This larger and more modern hospital on Gaines Street, with a 75-bed capacity, was built four blocks south of the medical school campus and six blocks west of the Veteran’s Hospital.

Patients arrived at the building on January 13, 1932. A notice in the February 1932 issue of Northwest Medicine called the building, “outstanding in the new conception of hospital design,” noting that “its exterior appearance is that of a large country house,” and that “the patients’ rooms are decorated and furnished in the manner of a well-appointed home.” Other notable features were a large lecture hall designed to offer classroom instruction to patients on caring for themselves after leaving the hospital, and a gymnasium area for exercise. All fourteen physicians on the hospital staff were also on the faculty of the medical school.

Dr. Jones and his partners at the Portland Clinic, Tom Joyce, Frank Kistner, and Laurence Selling, all on the hospital staff, intended to eventually turn the hospital over to the University of Oregon Medical School as a research unit. The start of the Second World War put those plans permanently on hold. The school began a concerted effort to educate additional nurses for the war effort, and acquired the building in 1943 in order to convert it into a student nurses’ dormitory.

Gaines Hall, as it was renamed, continued as a dormitory for incoming nursing students through the 1960s, and first-year students would traditionally reside there before moving to Emma Jones Hall or Katherine Hall after their capping ceremony. Women students under 21 attending the School of Nursing were required to live in campus dormitories or with their families.

By the 1960s, with the construction of the now-demolished Women’s Residence Hall, the former dormitory space was reallocated to administrative offices and programs. In the twenty-first century, Gaines Hall came to house a mix of academic programs, offices and classrooms.

Gaines, Barbara. A History of the School: 1910-1996, 1998. https://www.ohsu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-04/history_complete%20%281%29.pdf.

Washington Medical Library Association. "Medical Notes: Oregon." Northwest Medicine, Vol. XXXI, No. 2 (February 1932), 91-92.