Orphaned orphanage

Orphaned orphanage
Seward’s historic Jesse Lee Home, hurt by time and vandals, may be razed
By Jon Little
April 23, 2001
Anchorage Daily News

SEWARD – Billy Blackjack Johnson wasn’t 2 years old when his mother, a Nome woman stricken with tuberculosis, placed him in the Jesse Lee Home.

It was 1926, and the towering, three-story orphanage on a hillside overlooking Seward had just opened. Already, children were teeming within its tan, stuccoed walls Most of them were Alaska Natives from villages racked by waves of epidemics such as TB and influenza.

More than 100 youngsters packed its open dorm rooms, scrambling out of bed when the 7 a.m. breakfast bell rang, ushered by harried young matrons who were outnumbered 10 to 1.

“They gave us a home, they gave us food, they gave us a warm bed, and they taught us religion, and we should never forget that,” said Johnson, 77.

But how the Jesse Lee Home will be remembered has been the subject of speculation since it closed in 1965. Would=be developers have come and gone while the home – once an imposing and attractive Tudor-style mansion – molders.
Recently, the orphanage where John “Benny” Benson Jr. designed the Alaska flag and where it was first raised in 1927 has become the subject of legislation making its way through the House.

Rep. Ken Lancaster (R-Soldotna), who visited the school in its latter days, has introduced House Bill 96, asking the state Division of Parks to figure out how the state might develop and manager the property. The bill calls for spending $65,000 for an architect to analyze the abandoned orphanage.

Two of the three buildings still stand: the boys’ dorm known as Jewel Guard Hall and a 1936 dining hall and heating plant dubbed the Balto Building, after the lead dog from the famous 1926 serum run to Nome.

A statue of Balto once adorned a monument in front of the building but long ago disappeared.

The mansion, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, makes a striking first impression. But closer inspection reveals damage from age, abuse and neglect.

The home has attracted vandals armed with spray paint and liquor. Water pours in rivulets through holes in its wood-shingled roof and has warped the rotting floorboards three stories below. Stairways have collapsed. Insulation, possibly containing asbestos, drapes over rusting pipes in the basement.

In the early 1970s the hallways and dorm rooms were stripped over everything of value – windows, bathroom fixtures – leaving nothing but exposed wooden beams.

“It’s a slasher palace now. You could make a great horror movies here,” said Tim Sczawinski, a member of Seward’s historic preservation commission.

He wandered through its hallways recently, pointing out dorm rooms, house-parent apartentms, the curving ceiling of the scissor-trussed chapel and an airy gymnasium that rises to the attic rafters.

“I’d like to see part of it restored.” He said.

“I’ve seen 8,000-year-old Egyptian boats hauled back to the United States for preservation, and they were in a…lot worse shape than this place,” said Sczawinski, who describes himself as a “rabid historic preservationist.”

But is the old orphanage worth saving? Could part of it be restored as a museum? Should it be razed to the 2.6-acred lot with a vista of Resurrection Bay can be sold to developers or should It be turned into a state park?

City officials say Seward doesn’t have the money to address those questions, even though circumstances are forcing the city’s hand.

The city is wrapping up foreclosure on the property after the home’s former owner, Frank Irick of Anchorage, failed to make utility payments. The city council recently approved spending $50,000 to board up windows and erect a fence to keep people out.

“The private sector has given up on its ability to salvage the place, now it has become a public issue,” said city manager Scott Janke.

Janke said the statewide historic significance of the Jesse Lee Home begs for state oversight.

Besides its role in birthing the Alaska flag and accepting children orphaned by epidemics, the home also was converted, briefly, into barracks for US officers during World War II.

But the violent 1964 Good Friday earthquake may be most responsible for the home’s fate. The Methodist Church, which established it in 1925, abandoned it the year after it was damaged by the quake. It has been empty since.

“The deterioration is kind of growing exponentially now,” Janke said. “It’s been standing so long, vacant and open to the elements; that we need to make something happen. Something needs to be done before there’s no opportunity to salvage any of it.”

Johnson remembers Benny Benson as a kind, older boy who looked out for him. He has spent the last dcade working to reserve the old buildings where he grew up.

He wrote a 1991 book about his childhood at the Jesse Lee Home, “Shelter From the Storm,” and tried to assemble a nonprofit group to pay for the orphanage’s restoration. He said he has stacks of historic photos of the facility and its staff and still is willing to help out.

“I would volunteer my help at no cost to restore it,” he said via telephone form his home in rural North Carolina. “I would give my guidance and advise anytime they want me to come up there.