Oregon’s first hospice for people with HIV added to the National Register of Historic Places

In the late 1980s, when most mainstream healthcare facilities refused to admit people diagnosed with HIV and AIDS, an unassuming Craftsman house in Southeast Portland quietly opened its door to offer compassionate care in a safe, home-like setting.

Juniper House, the first end-of-life care facility for people dying of AIDS and AIDS-related complexes in Oregon, was recognized for its significance in social, health, medical and LGBTQ+ history, and listed in the National Register of Historic Places on Feb. 10.

The three-level house was a place where 90 men received medical care and emotional support from May 1987 through September 1989.

Although the period of significance does not meet the historic register’s criteria of a resource being at least 50 years old, the National Park Service, which oversees the program, allowed a rare exemption in this case.

The building “has to be exceptionally important,” said Ernestina Fuenmayor, who researched and wrote Juniper House’s nomination document. The exception “is not common, but having an HIV/AIDS epidemic building … is (also) unique and rare.”

Caregivers at Juniper House were trained to offer comfort and pain management assistance for individuals, including those who had been abandoned by their families and lacked financial resources after a job loss and costly medications.

Juniper House also participated in media efforts to decrease public fear of transmission, misinformation and stigma around HIV/AIDS.

When it opened May 5, 1987, Juniper House, licensed as Adult Foster Care, was the only group residential treatment for people with HIV/AIDS in the Northwest, according to Fuenmayor’s research.

The care facility led the way for additional facilities to operate in the Willamette Valley and southern Oregon in the early 1990s. Portland’s Our House continues to provide health and housing services.

To accommodate Juniper House patients, the interior of an Old Portland Craftsman Foursquare built in 1902 in the Buckman neighborhood was modified. Larger rooms were partitioned and sound-insulation wood panels were added.

But the exterior, with a wide porch and privacy-providing trees, intentionally maintained the look and feel of a typical family home for the residents’ protection.

A concrete wheelchair ramp led to a backdoor and a backyard concrete path allowed residents and staff to access the adjoining property, Assisi House, for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Fuenmayor told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she is grateful to those who showed “their courage, kindness and leadership in a moment of chaos, fear and discrimination.”

Women and men risked their jobs and faced society and cultural rejection to provide comfort and love to people who were in their last moments of life, she said.

Fuenmayor conducted interviews with people who have first-hand knowledge of Juniper House, including founders Doug Foland and nurse Jan Weyeneth.

The late John Trevitts, also a founder, was a Portland housing manager who invested 80% of the funds needed to start the project. He and Foland, a public relations executive and hospice volunteer who spent a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, named Juniper House after Junipero Serra of the Order of St. Francis of Assisi.

Services at Juniper House were funded through community donations, volunteer efforts and Medicaid/Medicare benefits.

HIV/AIDS killed more than 700,000 Americans between 1981 and 2021; 4,613 of them lived in Oregon, according to the Oregon Historical Society.

Fuenmayor, who has degrees in architecture and historic preservation, works at Salazar Architect, a design firm in Northeast Portland. She said she and the firm focus on communities that have been marginalized, discriminated against and under-researched.

Fuenmayor said the time-consuming nomination process was worth her effort.

“Sharing these stories of how people cared for each other despite all the stigma made a difference in the last months of these people’s lives and hopefully served as part of the changing tides of acceptance that we know happened in subsequent years,” she said.

The City of Portland’s LGBTQ+ Historic Sites Project sponsored the National Register nomination. Buildings identified as significant receive land use protections against demolition.

Fuenmayor hopes other resources like Juniper House will be nominated, opening the path to more research in this field.

“This will allow local governments to protect these places that otherwise can be overlooked by development,” Fuenmayor told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “We were lucky to have building owners who were supportive of this listing.”

The house is currently used as offices for wellbeing providers.