Whittier, the Town with Just One Building

Whittier is a small town in Alaska, where almost of all its 200 residents live under the same roof of a building with 14 floors

Begich Towers (BTI) also houses a post office, a police station, a grocery store, a laundry, a clinic and a church. In 2012, Reed Young photographer and writer Erin Sheehy came in this city, where they conducted a photographic project dedicated to this community.

The weather in Whittier is mostly cold and hard to endure, with the winter snow sometimes reaching six meters high, and with a wind speed of 60 meters/hour. This is why the life shared in BTI, a building constructed in the 50s by the US military and originally intended for the military families, it was a very effective solution for adapting to meteorology.

In the bitter and glacial winter days, the children in Whittier have to go to school by crossing a tunnel and most residents rarely get out of their house-city. In the months when visitors do not step into the town and all the seasonal business are closed, there happens an amazing thing as there is created a sense of intimacy. In one single place, there is the chief of police walking by the building, the students do their homework at the kitchen table of their teacher and the priest baptizes a baby in his own apartment.

In summer time the town flourishes, receiving many seasonal workers who embark on fishing boats or engage in canneries and also many tourists. In a year, 700,000 people visit the settlement with 200 inhabitants, but most of them don’t spend here less than an afternoon, choosing the larger towns nearby.