Rooted in Community: From bread to bagels to Bocca, the Messerschmidt 1914 building feeds Juneau

A young German baker named Gustav Messerschmidt arrived in Juneau in November 1898 when the town was still in its formative years. Having been a baker in San Francisco, Gus named his new business — initially located on Main Street — in 1899 to honor that town.

Gus married and started a family. They moved to a new location on Second Street in a wooden building with the San Francisco Bakery name handsomely painted on the storefront and the bakery’s horse-drawn delivery wagon.

In early 1907 the bakery needed a couple of buildings to operate. One contained a huge brick oven in the rear section. In 1914, Gus had the front building moved so he could build the concrete structure Juneauites walk past today. Large letters spell “Messerschmidt 1914” above the canopy that shelters the entrance to Silverbow Inn, the current business in the building. It is a small historic inn where owner-families lived upstairs until a few years ago.

Gus and his wife Gertrude Rosina Hermle, also of German descent and relocated from San Francisco, lived above the bakery and raised their nine children, including a renowned lively woman named Katherine Messerschmidt Shaw who celebrated her 100th birthday in 2009 in the bakery building where she was born. Her siblings took over the baking business after their father died in 1938. They continued the Messerschmidt family bakery, renamed Purity Bakery in the 1940s, until 1980. As with other modernization, supermarkets and advanced transportation methods meant changes for food delivery. Daily baked items were replaced with mass production, reducing the need for independent bakeries.

A big change occurred in 1997 when a young East Coast couple made the building famous once more for baked goods. Ken Alper and Jill Ramiel brought authentic New York bagels to Juneau customers, creating traditional shiny bagels with a specialized machine that rolled the dough for boiling and baking. With Alaska smoked salmon prepared into thinly sliced lox, diners had a truly homegrown yet New York experience on Second Street.

Jill and Ken devoted themselves to their community, to downtown and to their young family as they transformed the 1914 building into a classy inn with several historically-themed rooms. As their children grew older and bagel demand dwindled, the family moved south for better educational options. They still own the inn, spend time in Juneau and support the town from afar while Heather Houston is the onsite manager.

In the area where Silverbow Bagels rolled off the machine for nearly 20 years, yeasty aromas and bustling bakers once again fill the Messerschmidt Building kitchen. This week freshly made golden rigatoni pasta rests in a tray in front of the pasta machine while the new pair of stacked propane Vulcan ovens — just installed this month — reveal pans of domed bread dough through glass doors. Josh Druley, known as the “DoughFather,” stands nearby and deftly folds mounds of sourdough into perfect plump rounds that will soon be placed into bread pans to rest and rise for baking.

When award-winning Executive Chef Beau Schooler and partner Travis Smith opened “In Bocca Al Lupo” in early 2017, their priority was creating an elegant Calabrian Italian restaurant. In response to their customers’ preferences, however, the menu morphed into an Alaskan-Italian-Filipino fusion of homemade delicacies incorporating wild seafood and Alaskan wheat grown near Delta Junction. Schooler’s cuisine has earned multiple nominations for James Beard Awards — including a finalist for Best Chef of the Northwest in 2023 — and other honors. In late June, the New York Times called out “Lupo” as one of the “22 Best Pizza Places in the United States,” quite an honor in the little Alaska town of Juneau.

Schooler and Smith’s restaurants — “Lupo” and The Rookery Cafe — were doing well until COVID-19 hit and everything shut down. Beau and Travis used the time to reset their operations. They upgraded the deli-kitchen area of Lupo with new wall and floor tile, built fresh tables and the restaurant bar and added inviting decor to the restaurant while it was closed. Gradually the duo has been replacing equipment in the large commercial kitchen. The area is charged with energy now: a pastry crew arrives at 4 a.m. and works until 11 a.m., then the bread crew works the afternoon shift. Many of the pastries get transferred a block away to feed Rookery Cafe’s morning customers.

In the late afternoon, culinary staff along with Chef Beau prepare for dinner in the restaurant which seats more than 40 diners in a comfortable setting. Cannolis were being piped full of cream, green leaves were being torn off Juneau-grown fresh basil plants and hot pork meatballs were being dropped into a large pan of tomato sauce.

On Wednesday afternoon, the wood-fired pizza oven had just been started with a perfect stack of dried specialty wood imported for cooking purposes. The oven requires time to warm and hold the heat perfectly. Various length pizza peels stand ready to slide disks of dough in and out of the oven. The small wood-fired oven is located near the site of baker Gus Messerschmidt’s huge brick oven that baked bread for Juneau families more than 100 years ago.

The Silverbow Inn lobby celebrates the Messerschmidt Building’s origins with historic photos, detailed history, and a large antique cash register like one that rang up sales of bread and other treats in the early 1900s. Meanwhile, a few steps beyond the lobby tasty items rise in the warmth of a bustling kitchen reminiscent of Juneau’s early San Francisco Bakery. Gus and Gertrude might be pleased with later generations’ efforts in their namesake building.

• Contact Laurie Craig at laurie.craig@juneauempire.com. Rooted in Community is a series of articles focusing on unique buildings in Juneau’s Downtown Historic District and the present-day businesses (and people) that occupy them. This article has been moved in front of the Empire’s paywall.