HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
A downtown Juneau inn in the old Messerschmidt bakery building, where the ghost is said to be the baker who never closed up shop.
120 2nd St, Juneau, AK 99801
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Guests must be 21 or older to check in; children of all ages and families are welcome as guests.
Cost
$$
Room rates for an overnight stay at the inn.
Access
Limited Access
One ADA accessible room on first floor. Other rooms are on second/third floors; no elevator, stairs required.
Equipment
Photos OK
Historic Messerschmidt bakery building · Downtown Juneau commercial history
The Silverbow Inn stands at 120 Second Street in downtown Juneau, in a building long known as the Messerschmidt building. Its history is tied to baking: the site housed a bakery run by the Messerschmidt family in Juneau's early decades, when the town was growing around the Treadwell and Alaska-Juneau mines. Published accounts differ on the exact dates — the operator dates the Messerschmidt building to 1907, while the Juneau survey identifies the Silver Bow Inn at this address with a construction date of 1914 — a common ambiguity for downtown commercial structures of the period that were rebuilt and reused over time.
The baking tradition continued through much of the building's life. In its more recent history the address operated as the Silverbow Bakery and wine bar, a downtown fixture that has since closed. The boutique inn was assembled by joining several adjacent and connected downtown buildings into a single small hotel, with the historic Messerschmidt structure as its core.
Today the Silverbow Inn operates as a downtown lodging option a short walk from Juneau's waterfront and historic district. Its haunted reputation, centered on the old baker, has made it a stop on local ghost-themed walks, though it is a quiet, small-scale legend rather than a heavily reported one.
Sources
The Silverbow Inn's haunting fits its building's long life as a bakery. The resident spirit is described as a former baker who, in the inn's lore, never stopped working: a presence felt most in the early-morning hours, the time a bakery crew would have been firing the ovens and starting the day. Some tellings attach the legend to the Messerschmidt family's founding baker, who died in the 1930s, though that attribution belongs to ghost-tour storytelling rather than documented record.
Reported phenomena are gentle. Guests and staff describe phantom footsteps in empty hallways, faint music, furniture that seems to shift, and shadows passing the upstairs windows. There are no claims of malevolence; the figure is framed as a benign holdover from the building's working past, more comforting than frightening.
The inn appears on Juneau's downtown ghost walks, where the baker story is told alongside the heavier legends of the Alaskan Hotel and the Princess Sophia. As with most of these accounts, the specific identity of the baker is folklore, and the reports are anecdotal. The legend persists largely because the building's century of baking gives it an obvious and sympathetic ghost to attach to.
Notable Entities
Stay at the Silverbow Inn, a boutique inn assembled over time from several connected downtown buildings, the oldest of which housed Juneau's long-running Messerschmidt bakery. Guests interested in the lore can ask about the morning footsteps attributed to the building's old baker.
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