Gill, Oscar, House

The Oscar Gill house moved to the new town of Anchorage in 1916, is one of the city's oldest existing residences. It has Arts and Crafts Style details of a Late 19th and Early 20th Century American Movement house. It is associated with Oscar S. Gill, a prominent entrepreneur and politician of early Anchorage. Gill built the house in 1913 at Knik, a town at the head of Cook Inlet, and barged it across the inlet to the new town of Anchorage in 1916. The family lived in the house until 1928. One of the earliest houses erected in the South Addition, Anchorage's first subdivision, anticipated the transition of that area from farmland to a residential neighborhood. To prevent its demolition, the house was moved when the State of Alaska enlarged the Anchorage Pioneers' Home in the early 1980s. In 1993, the house returned to its old neighborhood and stands on a site, facing north as it did originally, less than four blocks from its historic location. It is one of few residences from Anchorage's founding years still standing that retains much of its original appearance.

Background

Oscar Stephen Gill came to Seward, Alaska, in 1907 and stayed in southcentral Alaska for the rest of his life. He ran a sawmill at Susitna and carried mail for the Northern Commercial Company from Seward to Susitna and Iditarod. He prospected briefly at Eklutna and at Clear Creek. Gold discoveries in Iditarod and Innoko prompted the Gills to move to Knik at the head of Cook Inlet when the town held the promise of becoming the new trade center to serve mines in the Willow Creek area to the northeast as well as the Iditarod district to the northwest. Gill built the house for his family in 1913.

President Woodrow Wilson announced in April 1915 the selection of a route for a government-built railroad from Seward to Fairbanks. Speculation that the railroad would go along Ship Creek caused hundreds to move to the area. In March, the flat area near the creek became the site of a tent city. By June, it had more than two thousand people. Like other hopefuls, Gill rushed to Ship Creek in 1915 to work on railroad construction. After the government surveyed and platted a townsite, Gill and his wife, the former Emma Dohrmann, bought a one-acre home site in the South Addition of the new town named Anchorage. Gill barged their house across Cook Inlet from Knik to Anchorage in 1916. Lumber was scarce at the new townsite, and Knik was being bypassed by the railroad.

The South Addition, added to the Anchorage townsite with the East Addition in 1916, was the area south of Ninth Avenue and included the blocks running east-west along what is now known as the Delaney Park Strip. In 1917, the government reserved a mile of land between Ninth and Tenth avenues and A and P streets for park and fire protection purposes. It was the town's airstrip from the mid-1920s to mid-1930s, and since has been a park strip. It has always distinguished the residential South Addition from the downtown
area.