‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ site to be razed

So long, Cuckoo’s Nest.

Oregon State Hospital, the mental institution where the 1975 movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was filmed, is making way for a new complex. Most of the dilapidated, 125-year-old main building will be torn down and replaced starting this fall.

Although “Cuckoo’s Nest” was filmed at the Salem facility, neither the movie nor the 1962 Ken Kesey novel on which it was based makes any specific references to Oregon State Hospital. Kesey drew on his experiences working at a veterans hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., and set his satirical story at an unnamed institution in Oregon.

The film, starring Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher, won five Oscars.