Unalaska commemorates 200 years of Russian Orthodox history with blessing of the Bishop’s House

Sally Swetzoff leans over a sewing machine in the dining room of the Bishop’s House, just across from Unalaska’s Front Beach. She’s hemming the curtains for the bedroom windows, and she’s on a tight deadline: His Grace arrives in the morning to commemorate the bicentennial of the Orthodox Church in Alaska. The Right Reverend Alexei will be the first bishop ever to stay in the Bishop’s House.

But the sewing machine keeps jamming.

“I think this material is too thick for it,” Swetzoff says, frowning.

Alexei arrives in about 18 hours, and Swetzoff is one of about a dozen volunteers sprinting to prepare the house for him. It’s the final push of a renovation that has lasted over a century.

The story of the Bishop’s House is something of lore in Unalaska. Bishop Nestor of Alaska and the Aleutians commissioned the two-story Victorian home in 1882. The component parts were fabricated in San Francisco and then sent to Unalaska by steamship where they were assembled. On an ill-fated Alaska voyage, however, before he was ever able to sleep in the house, Nestor fell overboard and drowned.

The blue house with a red roof survived storms, war and neglect before it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1970. American officers used the building for apartments during World War II, and it survived the 1942 Bombing of Dutch Harbor. In 1960, the very day that the church’s priest completed a restoration of the house, a fire burned down the adjoining school, which damaged the Bishop’s House. It was more or less shuttered until the 1970s when the community once again took up restoration efforts. Finally, in 2013, a nonprofit called Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska ramped up restoration efforts. ROSSIA hired a carpenter from California who specializes in historic restoration of Victorians, and he began seasonal work restoring the delicate wooden building.

“We took great efforts to save and repair the original woodwork,” says Marc Daniels, a contractor from California who has lived part-time in the region since 1993. “It’s incredible, the craftsmanship and love put into this house; that’s what we are trying to honor.”

The building is framed with old-growth redwood, the floor made of old fir, and it’s topped with cedar shingles. Perhaps most noteworthy, however, is the winding staircase that folds into itself like a nautilus.

“The builders created this intricate puzzle,” Daniels says. “These staircases are meant to be tuned up and tightened, rather than just squirting glue into the joints.”

Daniels and his assistant, Brooke Marino, took the nosing off the stair treads to find dove-tailed tenons that they tightened, thereby “saving that beautiful, beautiful stairway.”

They have been working 12, 14, and 16-hour days over the past several weeks. Now it’s up to the volunteers to help get them over the finish line.

“We’ve got to make sure that everything happens with extreme care,” Daniels says to the volunteers gathered in the dining room. “I want to make sure that in this last day, it doesn’t get dinged up or smudged up in the frenzy.”

There’s still a lot to do. They have to touch up the exterior paint job, finish decorating and, perhaps most importantly, make the bishop’s bed.“I actually just put the bedding on,” says Katherine McGlashan, standing upstairs in the bishop’s bedroom. She gestures to a painting of Unalaska’s bay that hangs beside a window that opens to the same view. “All the pictures were properly placed, and if you look at pictures like this one, it is of the front bay, and it’s right in front of the window of the front bay.”

Back downstairs, people are sweeping the floor, lacquering the bathroom cabinets and wiping the windows. Assistant carpenter Brooke Marino steps away from the frenzy and takes a breath.

“I’m a little bit stressed,” she says, “but I think we’ve got it.”

Marino has spent much of the day outside in a boom lift, painting the second story. Over the past month, she painted the entire exterior, top to bottom, a challenge in a region nicknamed the Birthplace of the Winds, and she’s relieved that touch-ups are finally finished.

But then, just as she’s returning the lids to their paint cans, a sudden gust flips a can of white paint, which splatters across the roof, freshly coated in red.

An Unalaska gathering

The morning came and, due to weather — and perhaps the grace of God — the bishop’s flight was canceled.

“I’m so sorry the bishop couldn’t make it, but we’re thankful to have that extra day,” said Ruffina Shaishnikoff, a church reader and choir singer. “Now we have time to practice one more evening with the Atka church singers, who are very good at harmony,” Shaishnikoff said.

St. Nicholas Church in Atka is the westernmost parish in the Alaska diocese. Crystal Dushkin is a church reader and choir singer at the church. She and her two daughters traveled 400 miles to attend the rare service in Unalaska, so she’s no stranger to the frustrations of Aleutian air travel.

“I’m really excited, and also really hopeful that flights come in on time, and everybody gets here,” she said.

The choir sings in English, Church Slavonic and the Unangax̂ language, Unangam Tunuu, practicing the songs they will sing if His Grace finally makes it to town.

Finally, the following day, Bishop Alexei and a delegation from ROSSIA arrived in Unalaska — it was finally time to bless the Bishop’s House.

About two dozen church members, clergy, parishioners and locals watched and sang as Bishop Alexei burned incense and anointed the house with holy oil.

“This house is blessed with the anointing of this oil in the name of the Father,” Alexei said as he passed through the various rooms.

Bishop Alexei was consecrated in 2020 and is the highest ranking clergy member in the Orthodox Church of Alaska, the largest Orthodox diocese outside of Russia.

“It’s wonderful that this house, which was built as a place for the bishop to rest close to the cathedral, that finally a bishop will actually be staying in the house,” Alexei said. “I’m sure I will have a peaceful rest.”

When Ivan Veniaminov arrived in 1824, only a few hundred people lived in Iliuliuk Village. The large bearded man was said to have cut an imposing figure when he walked into the Unangax̂ village, entering from the valley side on the old Biorka portage trail.

Veniaminov arrived from Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia, sent to the Aleutians to spread the Orthodox religion. He worked with local Unangax̂ builders to construct Unalaska’s Church of the Holy Ascension, where he performed the first Orthodox Divine Liturgy in Alaska. This summer, 200 years later, the Orthodox Church in America celebrated that historic sermon.

Orthodox parishioners gathered bright and early for Sunday services. And there’s another special visitor: Metropolitan Tikhon, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in America. He flew in from Washington D.C. to honor Veniaminov, who was later canonized as Saint Innocent, known in the church as Innokenty.

“The Lord could have used any means He wished to continue the work of evangelizing Alaska and her peoples, but He wanted St. Innokenty to join Him in that work. In the same way He once spoke to the Apostles, saying, ‘You give them something to eat,’ He called St. Innokenty to be His messenger,” Tikhon said to the congregation.

Saint Innocent arrived in Unalaska as Father Ivan Veniaminov in 1824. Although the legacy of the Orthodox Church in Alaska is complicated, Saint Innocent is best remembered for creating an alphabet for Unangam Tunuu, and serving as Unalaska’s priest for a decade.

“It’s a tremendous inspiration for the entire church as we continue to celebrate the very same liturgy that he celebrated 200 years ago today,” Tikhon said.

Dorothy Gray is the director of ROSSIA, and she visited Unalaska for the celebration.

Gray said Veniaminov is a part of church history cherished by Orthodox Christians a century and a half after his death. He’s known as something of a Renaissance man.

“He was also an educator,” she said. “He was a linguist. He translated texts into [Unangam Tunuu.] He was a builder. He was an iconographer and he taught certain Alaska Native[s] how to write icons, too.”

Gray described the Bishop’s House restoration as an “incredible historical and spiritual event.” She hadn’t seen the house in person in almost 30 years, and was delighted by the restoration project’s final result.

“Our bishop, Alexei — from everything we know and everything we’ve researched — is the first Orthodox bishop to have ever stayed in the Bishop’s House,” Gray said. “It was just an incredibly special event that I will never forget.”