Building Location:
104 Lambert Street North Half of Lot
Whitehorse, YT
Location Context:
Refer to Berrigan Cabins; the Cane House; and the Log Skyscrapers. Berrigan built all five buildings located within the first two blocks of Lambert Street. Perhaps the largest collection of existing log structures built by a single person in Whitehorse
Description:
Two-storey Log Structure
Architectural History:
This building is a two storey partially squared log structure with log roof beams and a gable roof covered in galvanized sheet metal. It also has timber grade beam footing with no basement.
Cultural History:
This two story log cabin is one of a number of buildings constructed by Martin Berrigan in the 1940’s.
Berrigan came to the Yukon during the gold rush of 1898. He was employed on the dredges plying the Dawson area until his departure in 1939. According to Berrigan, he “began to get headaches and generally felt run down, so he moved to Whitehorse because life is too short to allow for getting sick.”
This log cabin shares a site occupied by two single storey log buildings also built by Berrigan: constructed at just the time when Whitehorse experienced a shortage of accommodation due to wartime construction. He continued building log structures culminating in the now famed log “skyscrapers” completed in 1947. This cabin along with the others built by Berrigan were rented to many over the years. Mah Bing occupied the cabin for a period of time and in the 1950’s and 60’s it was a well-known bootleg spot in Whitehorse.