Source: KUCB
October 2, 2024
...The story of the Bishop’s House is something of lore in Unalaska. Bishop Nestor of Alaska and the Aleutians commissioned the two-story Victorian home in 1882. The component parts were fabricated in San Francisco and then sent to Unalaska by steamship where they were assembled. On an ill-fated Alaska voyage, however, before he was ever able to sleep in the house, Nestor fell overboard and drowned.
The blue house with a red roof survived storms, war and neglect before it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1970. American officers used the building for apartments during World War II, and it survived the 1942 Bombing of Dutch Harbor. In 1960, the very day that the church’s priest completed a restoration of the house, a fire burned down the adjoining school, which damaged the Bishop’s House. It was more or less shuttered until the 1970s when the community once again took up restoration efforts. Finally, in 2013, a nonprofit called Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska ramped up restoration efforts. ROSSIA hired a carpenter from California who specializes in historic restoration of Victorians, and he began seasonal work restoring the delicate wooden building.
...Read the rest at KUCB.
