Russian Bishops House, Colonial museum and landmark building in Sitka, US.
The Russian Bishops House is a two-story wooden structure featuring traditional Russian design elements, including intricate joinery and detailed craftsmanship throughout its frame and walls. The rooms contain period furnishings and artifacts that reflect daily life and administrative functions from the Russian colonial era.
Built in 1842, the house served as an administrative hub for Russian Orthodox missionary operations across an enormous territory spanning from California to Siberian Kamchatka. Following the sale of Alaska to the United States, the building underwent various uses that reflected shifts in regional control and purpose.
The house was the seat from which Bishop Ivan Veniaminov directed Orthodox missionary and educational work among the indigenous peoples of southern Alaska, nearly doubling the number of Orthodox worshippers in the region between 1841 and 1860. Missionary activity continued after the 1867 US purchase of Alaska and was only significantly cut back after funding cuts following the Russian Revolution in 1917. For most of the 20th century the upper floors held a chapel and the bishop's quarters, while the ground floor served various uses, including a printing operation in the 1920s that produced church publications along with the Sitka Sun and the Sitka Tribune.
The house stands at the corner of Lincoln and Monastery Streets in Sitka, and the National Park Service opens it to the public only on ranger-guided tours. The two secondary buildings on the grounds, the 1897 Old School and House 105, are not part of the tour.
The house was built by Finnish laborers brought in by the Russian American Company, and its nine bays each measure one sazhen, about 7 feet square. The south facade was sheathed in clapboarding around 1851, and the galleries received metal roofs at about the same time. The National Park Service acquired the property in 1973 and then carried out a major interior restoration.
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