Digital Bob Archive

A little piece of pre-cave in, pre-fire Douglas disappeared recently with the razing of the Ayson Hotel building in Ketchikan. The 50 by 100-foot building was originally the P.H. Fox store and stood at the corner of Second and D Streets. Patrick H. Fox was one of the earliest merchants in Douglas and served as the town's first postmaster in 1887. He put up the building about 1904 to replace his first store which was also on Second Street. After the Treadwell mines caved in, in 1917, Fox closed his store and moved to Aberdeen, Washington. In July 1920 the building was sold to Glenn Carrington, a traveling salesman, who in turn sold it to Dick Harris of Ketchikan, according to the Douglas Island News. Harris had the building torn down and reassembled in Ketchikan where he used it for his hardware store. It became the Ayson Hotel in 1966.

That was not the only Douglas-Treadwell building that took flight after the mine disaster. Early in 1921 the Juneau Camp of the Alaska Native Brotherhood purchased from the Treadwell Mining Company a building known as the Croatian Hall (the Serbian Hall in some accounts), floated it across the channel on a couple of barges and set it up on Willoughby Avenue as the ANB Hall.

Another Douglas store building wound up on Calhoun Avenue in Juneau as a grocery store. That one had stood on First Street and was owned by William Stubbins who at various times served Douglas as its postmaster and mayor and who was elected to the First Territorial Legislature in 1913. In the fall of 1920 the Stubbins building was torn down and was reconstructed on Calhoun Avenue where it served as Giovanetti's grocery store for some years. Today it is still on Calhoun, a part of the Knight Apartments.

Several dwellings were also carried across Gastineau Channel and re-established in Juneau. The newspapers, however, paid little attention to those smaller buildings and the total number is unknown.

What at one time had been the only lodge in Douglas, used by all of the fraternal orders, was torn down in September 1920. The building had had a drug store and a dwelling unit on its first floor, with the lodge hall above, and there are some indications that it was known as Ohman's Hall. Arthur Sholin bought the building in 1920, hired a gang of men to tear it down and salvage the lumber which he took to Hill Island, west of Chichagof Island, to be used for buildings on a fox farm he and his brother were establishing.

The most prolific mover, so far as Douglas buildings were concerned, was Abner Murray. A long time resident and owner of the Douglas Water Company, he had acquired considerable property on which he erected both business buildings and dwellings. In the summer of 1920 he tore down one of his business buildings, moved the lumber to Sitka, and erected it as the Bayview Hotel. He then acquired a boat named the Golden Rule and a couple of scows and returned to Douglas in 1921 to raze a four-unit apartment building and two single-family dwellings. All of the lumber was transported to Sitka and the three buildings were erected on Seward Street, where they remain today.