Woman's Club Building Listed on National Register

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Created on Friday, 25 October 2024 16:17

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Special to the Sentinel
Sitka Woman’s Club building has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, Alaska State Historian Katie Ringsmuth has announced.
The new listing made the club’s building at 300 Harbor Drive the 22nd National Register property in Sitka.

Sitka Woman’s Club members, from left, Martina Kurzer, Kim Gleason, Kelly Schwarz and Anne Pollnow stand on the pathway to the Woman’s Club Building on Alaska Day. The building was recently added to the National Register for its association with the social history and women’s history of Sitka. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

The project was initiated by Anne Pollnow, a member of the Woman’s Club, who wrote the Certified Local Government grant to write the nomination. On Nov. 16, 2023, the Alaska Historical Commission considered and supported the club’s petition, which had been forwarded by the Sitka Historic Preservation Commission.
The State Historic Preservation Office prepared the nomination package and on August 30 this year submitted it to the Keeper of the National Register in Washington, D.C.
The Woman’s Club Building is on the National Register under Criterion A of the National Historic Preservation Act, its association with social events at the local level in the history of the community.
The 1,176 square-foot one story cottage-style wooden building, which dates from 1897, fronts on Harbor Drive at the Maksoutoff Street intersection.
It was built in 1897, and the National Register listing cites its historical significance as its association with Progressive Era ideals and local women’s social clubs conducting philanthropic and community work in Sitka from the early 1900s and well into the 20th century.
    Its “period of significance,” under National Register guidelines, began in 1951, when the building was donated to the Sitka Woman’s Club, and ended in 1975 when the structure was leased to the City and Borough of Sitka for a senior citizen nutrition program, the Double O. The senior nutrition program is carried on today at the state-run Swan Lake Terrace on Lake Street. After the Double O the Woman’s Club rented its building for small shops and offices, currently a therapeutic health practitioner.
The Historic Register nomination states the building represents the culmination of earlier efforts and achievements of Sitka women by the mid-20th century. Furthermore, it remains a physical reminder of how Progressivism reached the farthest corners of the United States at the beginning of the 20th century and helped transform Sitka into a modern, quintessentially American community.
The building is also notable for its association with Sitka’s mining history. It was built in 1897 by Norwegian immigrant Hans Christian Pande, who had come to Sitka with his wife and daughter to be Collector of Customs.
Pande and several partners staked a gold mining claim north of town near Glacier Lake, locally known today as Pande (pronounced Pandie) Basin. He sold his interest in the claim to Benjamin P. Moore, who went on to run a scheme –– later proved fraudulent –– luring investors as far away as New York and London. Producing gold ore samples that they claimed were from the bottom of Glacier Lake, Moore and his company sold shares and built a road, hauled in equipment, and drilled a horizontal tunnel to drain the lake. In 1899 another test of the lake bottom gravel showed no gold deposits present. The tunnel failed to drain the lake, but the outfall can be seen today where a small stream continues to flow from the hillside.
Pande’s small cottage on the central Sitka waterfront was later owned by Sitka businessman W.P. Mills as a rental property. His wife, Florence Mills, and his sister, Loretta May Mills, were both prominent in Sitka charitable work. In 1951 the Mills family transferred the title of the Pande cottage to the Sitka Woman’s Club for one dollar, with the provision that the club in perpetuity would take care of the Mills family graves in the Sitka cemetery .
The Sitka Woman’s Club received a Historic Preservation Fund grant to complete the National Register nomination in 2020. The nomination was prepared by architectural historian Bridget Maley of architecture + history llc of San Francisco and Anne Pollnow, Sea Level Consulting, LLC. The 22 National Register sites in Stika include eight that are National Historic Landmarks, designating properties significant in the history of the United States.
More information about the National Register or historic preservation in Alaska is available from the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology and its website, dnr.alaska.gov/parks/oha. To learn about the Sitka Woman’s Club, visit the Sitka Woman’s Club page on FaceBook.