Digital Bob Archive

That the Juneau Museum should finally find a home during the administration of Mayor Ernie Polley seems appropriate. It was a bill authored by his grandfather, Representative Ernest M. Polley, that put the Territorial Museum, which is now the State Museum, in a home of its own. That was away back in 1923 when Polley was one of the four men comprising the First Division delegation in the Sixth Territorial Legislature.

The museum, together with the Alaska Historical Library, had been created by Congress back in 1900 and funded by fees collected from notaries public and lawyers. It was administered by the governor and the greater part of the funds went for the purchase of books which were kept in the governor's office and house, with little or no public access to them. Such museum acquisitions as there were, by purchase and donation, went into storage.

In 1920 the Alaska Historical Association was formed at Juneau and opened a museum in small space on the top floor of the Arctic Brotherhood Hall with the Rev. A.P. Kashevaroff as the curator. His salary was minimal and lack of space and poor security dictated that only a small portion of the existing museum collection be placed there.

Early in 1923 the Attorney General of the United States issued an opinion that the Alaska Historical Library and Museum was a territorial and not a federal responsibility, and the institution thus lost its federal funding. Governor Scott C. Bone immediately appointed a committee of local people, with E.J. \"Stroller\" White as chairman and Representative E.M. Polley as a member. They drafted a bill to appropriate $40,000 for the construction of a fireproof library and museum building and to create a Territorial Library and Museum Commission and the office of Librarian and Curator to operate the institution under the direction of the commission.

Rep. Polley introduced the bill soon after the Sixth Legislature convened in March and it went sailing through the House. In the Senate it ran into problems regarding the building. One senator wanted to buy the Arctic Brotherhood Hall, another insisted that the Territory should buy the Garside Building where the Legislature was then meeting. After a long wrangle the latter came up winner and the House reluctantly went along rather than lose the entire bill.

The Garside Building, at Third and Seward on the site of the present Log Cabin, was not fireproof but it was a two story building and the Treasurer, Attorney General and Commissioner of Education could all be housed on the upper floor.
In July, 1923, the library and museum opened in what became known as the Territorial Building. The museum has had three moves since then: to the Capitol where it remained until after it had become the Alaska State Museum, then first to the Masonic Temple and finally to its present location on Whittier Street.