by Max Johnson, University Archivist, Historical Collections and Archives

October 28, 2015

On December 1, 1962, the Medical Research Building held an open house inviting faculty, students, staff and members of the public to view the newly constructed laboratory and research facility. According to the September 2, 1967 issue of the Oregon Voter (located in our Strategic Communications Collection) "...the nine-story Research Building was completed with $2.5 million from the Oregon State Legislature, the National Institutes of Health and the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon."

The Medical Research Building is appropriately named. It was designed and developed to bring together the practice, education and science of the medical field under one roof. In the announcement to the Open House, it is noted that the gradual development of medical science to its present high form "can be directly attributed to the efforts of the physician-teacher-scientists in the medical education and research centers of the country. The University of Oregon Medical School is one of those centers." The MRB was designed to facilitate this type of engagement and was created to provide the space and functionality needed by modern medical equipment.

The Medical Research Building was designed by Architects Bear, McNeil, Schneider, Bloodworth and Hawes. The building contains a structural frame of steel and reinforced concrete on piling foundations.

Covering 117,611 square feet the building includes air-conditioned animal quarters, basic and clinical science laboratories, a complete research instrument service, and on every floor, a walk-in refrigerator and freezing rooms.

The open house was held Dec.1-2, 1962 and was open to the public. In the images included in this article you'll see a few of the public looking at medical equipment or being shown some radiographs by Charles T. Dotter, M.D. In addition, I found a number of images that show various types of research activity being conducted in the new facility.

As always, if any of the readers have any additional information about the event I am more than interested in hearing from you. Specifically, I am interested to know if you recognize any of the people in the images (it always help to identify people in the archives for further context for our holdings). In addition, I am interested to know if anyone went to the open house, took some pictures and would be willing to share. It sounds like it was a unique and monumental time for the University of Oregon Medical School (a precursor to today's OHSU School of Medicine) and it would be great to hear a first-hand account from someone who was a student at that time. Get in touch with me by email.

Learn More

• Learn more about OHSU and the School of Medicine at the Historical Collections & Archives