Main School | |
Alaska Heritage Resources Survey | |
Location | 800 Cushman Street, Fairbanks, Alaska |
---|---|
Coordinates | 64°50′23″N147°43′16″W / 64.83972°N 147.72111°W |
Area | 1.8 acres (0.73 ha) |
Built | 1934 |
Built by | William MacDonald Construction Company |
Architect | Tourtellotte & Hummel |
Architectural style | Art Deco |
NRHP reference No. | 90001472 [1] |
AHRS No. | FAI-244 |
Added to NRHP | September 27, 1990 |
The Patrick B. Cole Fairbanks City Hall, also known as Main School and Old Main for its previous use as a school building, is located at 800 Cushman Street in downtown Fairbanks, Alaska. An Art Deco concrete building, it was built in 1934 to replace the original Fairbanks school, a wooden building constructed in 1907 which burned down in late 1932. As Fairbanks grew exponentially with the military buildup associated with World War II and the Cold War, the building was enlarged in 1939 and again in 1948.
It was the city's only school from its opening in 1934 until the opening of Denali Elementary School in 1951. It became a junior/senior high school for several years until Lathrop High School began operation. The school then became Main Junior High School until it was replaced by Ryan Junior High School and Tanana Junior High School during the early 1970s. [2]
Following the disestablishment of Main Junior High, instruction in the building was mostly limited to alternative education programs. The building's primary purpose at that point was to house the administrative offices of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, a role it filled from 1976 until 1993. Most of those offices moved to the school district's current Fifth Avenue headquarters in the mid 1980s, and the building sat largely vacant for many years, eventually being completely abandoned.
The building has housed city offices since 1994, which moved from the longtime Fairbanks City Hall three blocks to the north. [3] In addition to city offices, the former school gymnasium is home to the Fairbanks Boys & Girls Club. Previous non-governmental tenants of the building under city ownership have included the Fairbanks Boxing Club and the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 as Main School. [1]
The building was renamed the Patrick B. Cole City Hall after Patrick Cole, a long time City Manager and Chief of Staff to eight Fairbanks City Mayors. [4]
The Fairbanks North Star Borough is a borough located in the U.S. state of Alaska. As of the 2020 census, the population was 95,665, down from 97,581 in 2010. The borough seat is Fairbanks. The borough's land area is slightly smaller than that of the state of New Jersey.
Fairbanks is a home rule city and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska, United States. Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska and the second largest in the state. The 2020 Census put the population of the city proper at 32,515 and the population of the Fairbanks North Star Borough at 95,655, making it the second most populous metropolitan area in Alaska after Anchorage. The Metropolitan Statistical Area encompasses all of the Fairbanks North Star Borough and is the northernmost Metropolitan Statistical Area in the United States, located 196 miles by road south of the Arctic Circle.
The Carlson Center is a 4,595-seat multi-purpose arena in Fairbanks, Alaska, United States. It is the third largest arena in Alaska by seating capacity after the Sullivan Arena and Alaska Airlines Center, both of which are in Anchorage. It is home to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Nanooks ice hockey team and also serves as the site for the university's commencement exercises as well as graduation ceremonies for Lathrop, West Valley, and North Pole High Schools. The building served as the site for the Top Of The World preseason college basketball tournament until its demise in 2007. Opening in 1990, the venue is named after John A. Carlson (1920–1988), who served as Fairbanks North Star Borough mayor from 1968 to 1982.
The Big Dipper Ice Arena, colloquially known as "The Big Dipper", is a multi-purpose arena in Fairbanks, Alaska. The arena is owned and operated by the Fairbanks North Star Borough. Originally constructed as an airplane hangar for the Lend-Lease program in Tanacross, southeast of Fairbanks, the building was dismantled, transported to Fairbanks and reassembled in 1968. It has undergone two major renovations since then. The building is home to the Fairbanks Ice Dogs ice hockey team. The borough's parks and recreation department is headquartered in the building.
The George C. Thomas Memorial Library, also known as the North Star Borough Library is a historic former library building at 901 1st Avenue in Fairbanks, Alaska. Built in 1909 with funding from philanthropist George C. Thomas, this log building served Fairbanks as its public library until 1977, when the Noel Wien Public Library was opened. This building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978 as the site of a key conference in 1915 between Alaska Native leaders and federal government representatives, at which the Native leaders pressed a number of issues, including the long-running matter of native land claims, which would not be resolved until the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the U.S. state of Alaska:
The history of Fairbanks, the second-largest city in Alaska, can be traced to the founding of a trading post by E.T. Barnette on the south bank of the Chena River on August 26, 1901. The area had seen human occupation since at least the last ice age, but a permanent settlement was not established at the site of Fairbanks until the start of the 20th century.
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.
The Masonic Temple was a historic two-story wooden building at 809 1st Avenue, near the Chena River in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was built in 1906, expanded in 1908, and further altered in 1913 and 1916. Its architecture was "eclectic Renaissance Revival", a style that had been popular in the "lower 48" United States in the 1880s and 1890s. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
The Sitka U.S. Post Office and Court House, also known as the Sitka Post Office and now serving as Sitka City Hall, is a Moderne style building located at 100 Lincoln Street in the center of Sitka, Alaska. One of eight Federal buildings constructed in the Alaska Territory in the 1930s, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
The Old City Hall, now the Fairbanks Distilling Company, is a historic civic building at 410 Cushman Street in Fairbanks, Alaska. It is a two-story Art Deco structure, built out of reinforced concrete in 1935 as a fireproof alternative to the city's previous city hall. The building is roughly T-shaped, with quoining patterns incised in the corners and bands of decoration on a parapet level. The building was originally built to house city offices as well as police and fire stations; the entrances to the fire equipment bays on Cushman Street have been filled in with wood framing and siding. The building was enlarged by extensions to the rear twice, once before 1950, and once after the 1967 floods. The city moved its offices to the adjacent Main School in 1994; the building then housed the Fairbanks Community Museum until it was acquired by Fairbanks Distilling Company in July 2014.
Constitution Hall houses the student center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Fairbanks, Alaska. Completed in 1955, the building was the site that year of the meeting at which the Alaska State Constitution was drafted, a milestone in the territory's drive for statehood. It is a reinforced concrete structure two stories high. The building currently houses a bookstore, barbershop, alumni association offices, and the campus mail room.
The Fairbanks Exploration Company Machine Shop is a historic machine shop in Fairbanks, Alaska, United States. Located behind the Fairbanks Exploration Company administration building at 612 Illinois Street, it is a large single-story steel-frame structure, built in 1927 to serve the company's nearby gold mining operations. Its easternmost section is 16 feet (4.9 m) high, while that on the west is 20 feet (6.1 m) high, in order to accommodate belt-driven equipment and cranes. A tall double door at the center of the east facade is the main entrance. The front of the building housed large belt-driven lathes, while the center had a welding shop, drill presses, and a tool room. A blacksmithy in the back had a sand floor. The building was used by the F.E. Company between 1927 and 1964.
The Fairbanks Exploration Company Dredge No. 2 is a historic gold mining dredge in a remote area of Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska, northeast of the city of Fairbanks. It is currently located on the north bank of Fish Creek, shortly northeast of the mouth of Slippery Creek. Its main structure is a compartmented steel hull, 128 feet (39 m) long, 60 feet (18 m) wide, and 12 feet (3.7 m) high, with a 1-2 story superstructure above made of steel and wood framing sheathed in corrugated metal. It has three gantries, and a digging ladder 112 feet (34 m) long at its bow that weights 178,000 pounds (81,000 kg). All of its original operating equipment was reported to be in place in 1999. The dredge was built in 1927 by the Bethlehem Steel Company, and assembled for use in Alaska in 1928. It was operated by the Fairbanks Exploration Company in the Goldstream Valley from 1928 to 1949, and on Fairbanks Creek and lower Fish Creek from 1950 to 1961.
The Old Federal Building is a historic government building at Cushman Street and 3rd Avenue in Fairbanks, Alaska. When it was built in 1933, it was the most northern instance of concrete construction in the United States. It is a large building with three full-height floors and two smaller penthouse levels. The building's Art Deco styling includes V-shaped grooves set in pilasters that separate columns of windows and aluminum panels. The grooves are repeated in concrete spandrels above the top row of windows. Interior decoration includes terrazzo flooring, copious use of marble in walls and floors, and a pressed copper ceiling in the courtroom. The building was designed by Washington, DC architect George N. Ray, and built by William "Mac" MacDonald, who also later built the Federal Building in Nome. It originally housed the federal court, post office, and other federal government offices, and the decision to locate it in Fairbanks was critical to the rise of the city's importance; it now houses private offices.
The Oddfellows House, also known as Oddfellows Hall, is a former fraternal clubhouse of Oddfellows at 825 1st Avenue in Fairbanks, Alaska. It is a wood-frame building with two sections, the front one a narrow two-story structure, the rear one a wider single-story structure. Each section has its own gable roof, although they do briefly align. The building was built in 1907 by Madame Renio, a fortune teller, and initially housed a clinic and residential space in the front and a bathhouse in the rear. The bathhouse business failed after its pipes froze in the winter of 1909–10, and the building was purchased by the local chapter of the International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF). This fraternal organization converted the front space into a kitchen and bathroom, and the rear was converted into a large meeting hall. Under the IOOF's ownership the hall was used by a wide variety of civic and religious organizations, including its sister organization, the Golden North Rebekahs. The IOOF chapter was inactive between the late 1930s and 1945, but the Rebekahs continued to maintain the building, eventually taking ownership in 1967. The Rebekahs disbanded in 2007, and the space was briefly used as a museum; it now houses a retail establishment.
Manley & Mayer was an American architectural firm in Alaska, and was the leading firm in Anchorage for several decades.
The Old Waterville High School, also known historically as the Gilman Street School, is a former school building at 21 Gilman Street in Waterville, Maine. Opened in 1912 and enlarged in the 1930s with Works Progress Administration funding, it is locally distinctive for its Collegiate Gothic and Art Deco architecture, and for its importance to the city's education system. The building, now converted to residences, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.
The Rose Building was a historic commercial building in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was located on the west side of Illinois Street, north of the offices of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, and was a three-story log structure, capped by a steeply pitched gable roof. It is believed to have been built about 1912 in the mining community of Chena, and was moved to Fairbanks in 1925. It was named for Louis Rose, who purchased the building in 1938. It was, at the time of its demolition, the oldest commercial log building in the city, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. It was demolished in 1998 as part of the Illinois Street roadworks.