Historical Context - The City and Borough of Juneau

to go, and probably no other person influenced the development of the Flats more in
the next several decades than a stout little carpenter named Jimmy Larsen.
Jimmy Larsen
Courtesy of the Larsen Family
Larsen was born in Denmark in 1883. He emigrated to
the United States in 1907, and eventually arrived in
Juneau about 1913, where he made his home for the
rest of his life. He worked a brief stint in the local
mines, but that life wasn’t for him, so he became a
building contractor, constructing more than 20 houses
in the Casey Shattuck Addition where he himself
lived.
Jimmy’s first house on the Flats was at 603 Twelfth,
which he built himself. Here he and his wife raised
their son, Bob. Jimmy was a perfectionist, and the ads
for his houses read “Jimmy Larsen built,” as a mark of
quality. He would get his ideas for house design from
magazines or Sears Roebuck catalogs, and then
embellish them. He had an innate ability to see and
imagine things in three dimensions.
He also had an eye for beauty, and some of the trademarks of his houses are 45degree
angle cuts on the window and door trim, decorative fireplaces, and built-in
shelves. Almost all of his houses had basements and Ray furnaces. Other Larsen
trademarks were tiled kitchen counters, hardwood floors, and seafoam green paint.
Many Larsen houses were landscaped before he sold them, and oftentimes he lived in
a house for a short while to make sure everything worked perfectly.
Men who worked for him recall that he was always into quality. If you dropped a
nail, you went down the ladder to pick it up, and if you made a mistake, you started
over. Jimmy personally handpicked all the lumber that went into his houses from
Columbia Lumber Company. He was a distinctive character in town driving around
in his Dodge truck, clad in Oshkosh overalls and wooden shoes. The son of a farmer,
at his own house there were tiger lilies, potatoes, and hives of bees.
Perhaps the most notable Jimmy Larsen houses in the Casey Shattuck Addition are
the four clumped together at 506, 519, 521, and 525 Ninth Street. They were finished
late in his career and are prime examples of his craftsmanship. The house at 525
Ninth was one he built for himself in 1952, and where he died in 1957.
Jimmy was also an important figure in the lives of neighborhood children. For many
years there was an understanding between Larsen and the younger crowd in Casey
Shattuck that the houses that he was constructing were available for play after
working hours, so long as there was no vandalism or theft. So, from basement
excavation to close-in, Larsen houses provided fortresses, complete with scaffolding,
ladders, and weapons for repelling invaders.
The fortresses provided by Jimmy (there was always at least one under construction),
draft Casey Shattuck Neighborhood Historic Buildings Survey Page 16