Lee, Jesse, Home for Children

About this property

The Jesse Lee Home for Children was a former home for displaced children on Swetmann Avenue in Seward, Alaska, United States. It was operated by the United Methodist Church from its opening in 1926 until the building suffered damage from a 1964 earthquake and operations were relocated to a new building in Anchorage. Prior to 1926, the Methodist Church operated children's homes in Nome and Unalaska. The facility at Unalaska, established in 1889 and also functioning as a boarding school, was called the Jesse Lee Home, named after a Methodist minister in the US northeast during colonial days. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, the Spanish flu pandemic was particularly deadly in remote Native villages, leaving more displaced children. The old missions were overfilled, in disrepair, and transportation of supplies and children to these remote locations was unreliable and expensive. Seward was selected as a new location because at that point in time, it was Alaska's largest port and transportation point. Transportation costs would be lower due to regularly scheduled routes directly from Seattle. Residents were mainly Native children from the Aleutian Islands (Aleut) and Seward Peninsula (Iñupiat). In the first year after the school opened in 1926, resident Benny Benson won a competition to design the territorial flag. His design is still in use as the state flag. Benson, who was moved from the previous home in Unalaska, was from the village of Chignik. He was a 13-year-old student who won the competition out of over 700 entries. Fanny Kearns, a young Eskimo woman who was employed as a seamstress at the JLH sewed the first Alaskan flag out of leftover cloth. On July 9, 1927, the Balto Building was dedicated and the new flag was raised for the first time at the Jesse Lee Home. The date is still commemorated in the state as Alaska Flag Day. On July 4, 1928, another Chignik boy, Ephriam Kalmakoff, at 14 years old won Seward's Mount Marathon Race, a mountain foot race above Seward that stood until 1957. He remains the youngest race champion. Another Aleut student at Jesse Lee Home, Peter Gordon Gould from Unga Island overlapped with Benny Benson when the school first moved from Unalaska. Gould would go on to found Alaska Methodist University in Anchorage, now Alaska Pacific University, as its first president attended in 1960. The site consisted of three main buildings connected by arcades and several smaller buildings. Original construction included two dormitories, Jewel Guard Hall and Goode Hall. The Balto Building was added between the two dormitories and provided dining space and a large kitchens. In addition to boy's dormitories, Jewel Guard Hall held a shop, vocational classrooms, a darkroom, classrooms, library, and gymnasium. Goode Hall served as the girl's dormitory and administrative offices. Additional buildings on the property included a superintendent's house, barn, schoolhouse, residence, garage, and cold storage. During World War II, the residents were moved to other locations. The primary buildings were painted camouflage and a temporary Fort Raymond Army Base occupied part of the home's property.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Kenai Peninsula County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Kenai Peninsula County.

More historic places in Alaska

Browse all historic places in Alaska.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Alaska history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.