1 Comments Posted by sher

It was sad when it was open..it was sad when it closed. I lived in Salem when DSH closed. There were suddenly people literally wandering the streets with noplace to go, who should NOT have been out there. Supposedly they were going to private living arrangements and into community care, but a lot of them just landed on the streets with no idea what to do.
My mom worked at the hospital in the 50's. She has stories. And stories. One thing she told me about the basements was that patients were transported down there too. That due to the impracticality of the kirkbride design (!!!) it was impossible for a patient to leave their ward without either going outside or through another ward. Since they had, at that time, a communal dining room that most patients who were able were expected to take their meals in, whole wards full of patients had to be moved from their ward to the dining room, which was located centrally in the building. They couldnt traipse through other wards so they all headed down to the basement, which at the time were all divided with a male side and a female side. Not patients on one side and staff on the other. The staff traveled with the patients, one nurse in the front, on in the back, through the basements. From the stories I've heard, it was quite an adventure each and every time.