Source: Peninsula Clarion
September 21, 2017
Some of the square-hewn timbers of the small Russian Orthodox chapel in Old Town Kenai may be exchanged for fresh wood during a planned restoration project by Kenai’s Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox church.
The church congregation recently received $12,500 from the nationwide Russian Orthodox philanthropic organization Fellowship of Orthodox Christians in America for restoring the chapel, a finishing step in renovation efforts the church has been pursuing since 2008.
“Unusual among Alaskan Russian Orthodox chapels, the Chapel of St. Nicholas is larger and more elaborate than most shrines, with its tall pyramidal roof and cross gable, yet smaller and plainer than most chapels, with its unfinished log interior,” noted historian Alice Hoagland in a 1990 report on the chapel for the Historic American Buildings Survey.
The chapel cost $300 to build in 1906 when Kenai residents erected it over the graves of Kenai’s first resident priest Egumen Nicholai, his assistant Makarii Ivanov and an unknown third monk.
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