Edwin Butler Crittenden

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Category: Obituaries

Created on Friday, 16 January 2015 14:37

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Services will be held in Anchorage Saturday for Edwin Butler Crittenden, often called “the dean of Alaska Architects,” who died Jan. 10 In the Anchorage Pioneers Home.

He was 99 years old.

Between starting his own architecture practice in Anchorage in 1950 and his retirement in 1986 Crittenden designed countless residences, schools, churches and public buildings in Anchorage and throughout the state.

He had a long association Sitka, that began in 1956 with his work for Sheldon Jackson College, designing Condit House, a student housing building, Austin House, the president’s residence, and an upgrade of the Sage Building. He later designed the renovations and addition to the 1885 Sheldon Jackson Museum, and the new Hames Physical Education Center.

After retiring from his Anchorage architectural practice in1986 Crittenden and his wife Katherine “Kit” Crittenden made their home for several years in Sitka, where he served as campus architect for Sheldon Jackson College. In that role he consulted in the design of Sweetland Hall and, in his own words, “prepar(ed) programs and concepts for the rehabilitation of the buildings and utilities of the 1910 quadrangle and the constant upgrading of facilities as the school matures to a fine private institution of higher education.”

He was a great admirer of the architectural designs of others, and in particular the New York firm of Ludlow and Peabody, designers of the 1910 central campus of the Sheldon Jackson school.

 Crittenden presented a paper titled “The Architecture of the Sheldon Jackson College Campus” at the 1989 meeting of the Alaska Historical Society. He oversaw the publication of the paper as a book, illustrated with his own drawings, that became the blueprint for a later project spearheaded by a community volunteer group, with concurrence of the SJ trustees and administration, to have the campus designated a National Historic Landmark.

When Allen Hall, the central building of the SJ campus, was found to be unsafe for continued use, Crittenden designed the temporary interior supports that braced the building against further structural collapse, and bought the time needed before the building, now the heart of the Sitka Fine Arts Camp campus, could be restored and renovated.

In a volunteer project supported by a state historic preservation grant, Crittenden and another architect, Robert Fehlberg, drew up the concept plans for the conversion of the historic downtown Sitka Post Office into new offices for the Sitka city government. The plan was adopted by the city, and the old post office, which had been falling into ruin in the years since being vacated by the postal service, was renovated into a modern Sitka city hall at far less expense than a new building would have cost, while retaining the features that qualified it for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

The following is from the obituary that appeared in the Jan. 14 edition of the Alaska Dispatch News. 

Ed Crittenden was born and grew up in New Haven, Conn., the third of five children of Harriet Butler and Walter Eaton Crittenden. He and Kit, his wife of 65 years, met and married in in 1944 in Ketchikan, where Ed was stationed with the U.S. Coast Guard following his graduation from the Yale University School of Architecture in 1942, and where Kit had gone for a post-college summer visit with a friend. 

The first of their six children, Katie, was born there in 1945. After he left the Coast Guard in 1946, Ed moved his young family to Santa Paula, Calif., where he went to work with a friend from his undergraduate days at Pomona College. 

Their son, John, was born there in 1947. The family then moved to Massachusetts, where Ed began further graduate work at M.I.T. While there, however, he saw an announcement posted on a bulletin board about a job with the Alaska Territorial Housing Authority. He was offered the job and the then-family of four moved to Anchorage, where the couple’s four other children, Jim, Elizabeth, Davis and Harriet, were born. 

Ed started his own architecture practice in Anchorage in 1950, and over the years he partnered with others and mentored a number of younger architects who went on to successful practices of their own. Countless residences, schools, churches and prominent buildings in Anchorage and many other Alaska communities, rural and urban, are Ed Crittenden designs. Among them, in Anchorage, are the Captain Cook Hotel, the now-Conoco Phillips Building, the Egan Convention Center and many parts of Providence Hospital.

Ed’s firm was responsible for developing the first UAA campus Master Plan, which included the “spine” concept to eventually connect all the buildings on campus. He also designed the original Consortium Library, the old sports complex and the Theatre and Fine Arts Building.

Ed’s work included many elementary, junior high and high schools as well, particularly in Anchorage, Fairbanks and the Mat-Su Valley. In 1963, Ed took a sabbatical and moved his family to Helsinki, Finland, for a year, where he studied northern design, particularly the work of Alvar Aalto and Ralph Erskine. 

In 2012, Ed received the Kumin Award from the Alaska AIA fellows for his contributions to the theory and practice of northern architecture. He also had a long history of involvement with the American Institute of Architects, co-founding AIA Alaska in 1961 and twice serving as  president. 

In 1979, he became Alaska’s first AlA Fellow, and in 1981 he was the first Alaskan to be elected Northwest and Pacific Regional Director. He also served on the National Advisory Board’s Committee on Architecture for Education. In 2009, Ed was awarded the AIA Northwest and Pacific Region’s Medal of Honor, and in 2010 he received an honorary doctor of humanities degree from UAA. Ed retired from his architecture practice in 1986, although the firm remains active as Architects Alaska, with his son John as one of the principals.

He and Kit then spent four years in Sitka, where he was the campus architect for Sheldon Jackson College and where he took up painting watercolors. They returned to Anchorage in 1990, and Ed continued to be active in the arts, architecture and painting. Ed’s love for the beauty of nature was reflected not only in his design work and  paintings but in his lifelong love for sailing.

For many years he and Kit took their children and grandchildren on voyages in and around the Puget Sound area as well as up and down the Inside Passage in Ed’s beloved sailboat, the Stormbird.

He moved into the Anchorage Pioneer Home in 2011, where he continued his artistic pursuits until close to the time of his own death.

Ed was predeceased by his parents; four siblings, Ben, Abe, Eunie and Lyman; and, in 2010, by his wife, Kit.

He is survived by his six children, Katie, John (Robin Warren), Jim (Mollie Doran), Elizabeth (Oscar Palacios), Davis (Lanie Balandel) and Harriet (Mike LaMair); 11 grandchildren, Clayton Olander (Hannah Ackerman), Karen Crittenden Nijem (George), Anna Crittenden (Charles Lamy), Emily Crittenden Gros (Sacha), Aurora Alexander, Carson Coulon (Dajana Siebert), Mara and Eva Perrigo and Edwin, Davis and Kate LaMair; nine great-grandchildren, Addison Olander, Georgie and Fiona Nijem, Guillaume Lamy, Remi and Gage Gros and Lucca, Leonie and Liam Coulon; and a multitude of nieces and nephews.

A memorial service for Ed will take place at First Presbyterian Church, the church in which he, Kit, and their family worshiped, on the corner of 10th Ave. and G Street, 3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 17, 2015. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests a contribution to the Oscar Anderson house.

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