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11 Most Endangered
Richard H. Allen Memorial Auditorium
Year Listed: 1999
Location: , Alaska
Current Status: Saved
Threat: Deterioration, Neglect
Latest News
The EDA allocated $150,000 in 2009 to explore this idea and work with state legislators to create a training school in the campus buildings.
Significance
Founded in 1878 as a trade school, Sheldon Jackson College is the oldest educational institution in Alaska and has played a nationally significant role in the education of Native Alaskans and in transforming the social and political history of Southeast Alaska Native communities. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2001, the Sheldon Jackson College campus includes a historic quadrangle of Arts and Crafts style academic buildings, situated on the Sitka waterfront. The Richard H. Allen Memorial Auditorium has been the centerpiece of the college's campus since it was constructed in 1910.
Updates
Years of deferred maintenance on the buildings at Sheldon Jackson College accumulated in the second half of the 20th century as the institution struggled to find its financial footing. The lack of attention to the historic buildings at the college began to take its toll in the late 1980s. By 1994 the Allen Memorial Auditorium was so badly deteriorated that college authorities closed the building and announced plans to demolish it. This threat spurred the 1999 listing of the auditorium as one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
Following the listing, the Sheldon Jackson College campus was designated a National Historic Landmark, making it eligible for numerous public and private grant opportunities. In 2003, the college received a $100,000 grant to renovate Allen Memorial Hall from The Allen Foundation for the Arts in Seattle, WA. The college also received a Getty Foundation Campus Heritage Grant in 2003 to prepare a campus preservation plan. Between 2003 and 2006, Allen Memorial Hall underwent renovations to the auditorium space and second-story spaces as well as two new additions similar in style and form to the original structure. Sadly, renovation funds ran out before the project could be completed, and an estimated additional $2 million is needed to finish the work.
A larger threat to the Allen Memorial Auditorium and the entire historic Sheldon Jackson College campus struck in 2007 when the trustees of the institution announced that the school was bankrupt and would close its doors that June. The college property went into receivership and is now under the control of a property management company hired by the college's major creditor. The buildings on the campus are boarded up and sit vacant and the campus has been subdivided and put up for sale. No maintenance has been performed on any of the buildings beyond keeping them heated, and the harsh marine environment in Sitka has begun to take its toll, evidenced in pealing paint and molding exteriors.
Sitka residents, former Sheldon Jackson College students, the National Park Service, the Alaska State Historic Preservation Office, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation began working together shortly after the college closure to ensure that the historic quadrangle at the college was preserved and sensitively reused. Community organizations have since taken over several modern buildings on the college campus, and the historic Sage Science Building is the new home of the Sitka Science Center. Unfortunately, half a dozen other buildings, most on the historic quadrangle, remain vacant and deteriorating. Concerns also remain about how development on adjacent parcels will affect the historic campus buildings.
There is hope that the college will once again be used to educate Alaskans, however. The Sitka Economic Development Association (EDA) has appointed a task force to look at redeveloping the campus, and the Sitka School District has expressed interest in repurposing the school as a vocational and technical training facility. The EDA allocated $150,000 in 2009 to explore this idea and work with state legislators to create a training school in the campus buildings.
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