The Alaskan Hotel was built in 1913.

The donor included a short history of the McClosky family who built and ran the hotel in a letter to Bettye Adams dated April 17, 1995:

Dear Mrs. [Bettye] Adams, I am the fellow who stopped at your hotel while my wife and I were on a tour of Alaska. I showed you a number of pictures relating to your hotel. My father, Thomas E. Torphy, Sr., was a nephew of the McClosky brothers, two of the hotel’s founders, and was a first cousin to Nellie McClosky. Most of the originals of the enclosed photographs were sent from Alaska to my father’s brother, Martin Torphy while Tom was spending a year working at the McClosky’s cigar stand across Franklin St. from the hotel. Next to the cigar stand were a barber shop and the Germania bar, both also owned by the McCloskys. The cigar stand, bar and barber shop are gone. [Donor goes on to provide descriptions and numbers for each photograph—see inventory.]