Area less than one acre NRHP Reference # 80004586 Added to NRHP 6 June 1980 | Built 1843 Opened 1843 | |
 | ||
Location In Lower Kalskag, Lower Kalskag, Alaska MPS Russian Orthodox Church Buildings and Sites TR | ||
The St. Seraphim Chapel, in Lower Kalskag, Alaska, United States, in Bethel Census Area, is a historic Russian Orthodox church that may include a portion built in 1843, or it may have all been built later. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
The community has a 1975-built new church used for Russian Orthodox services; this is an old church that is either a later enlargement of an original church built probably in 1843 or it is wholly a later 1800s replacement. The old church reflects the influence of traditional three-part Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical architecture in America expressed in the style of a log cabin. Balanced in the center, it is divided into three parts: vestibule, nave, and altar chamber. Each section is built by squared logs with corner dovetailing and straight butt joints at points where the logs are shorter. A 1979 survey suggested that no other extant log church in Alaska (and perhaps nowhere else in all of North America) of its age possessed comparable construction.