Christ of the Breadline

Lisa Demer / Teresa Neumann Reporting : May 13, 2005
Anchorage Daily News

Seventeen years ago, two homeless men at Brother Francis Shelter in Anchorage, Alaska, painted an enormous mural depicting Jesus standing with Alaskans in a breadline, on the shelter's dining room wall. During recent extensive renovations, construction workers cut out that wall and built a frame around the mural entitled, "Christ of the Breadline."

The artists painted real people. A woman who looks like a Yuppie backpacker is, Harris said, a former social services director at Bean's. Others in the bread line are real homeless from the 1980s. Most have presumably moved on.

What began as a drafty, converted equipment barn turned temporary shelter in 1983, the new homeless refuge is 7,000 square feet bigger than the original building. Its enlargement was not intended to sleep more than the maximum 240 people that it previously held; rather the extra room provides more private office space for social services, health care and rooms for showers and storage.

The porch, with its bay-like openings, "looks like a car wash!" said Dale Bradley, who has settled into his own room at the Mush Inn but periodically needs the shelter. Not that looks matter. "If it wasn't for this place," he said, "I wouldn't be alive."

"It is an institution," said Tom Livingston, one of the architects who designed it. "The shelter management is devoted to getting these folks homes. While this has all the amenities of home, they don't want it to be so welcoming that people don't want to leave."