The
Collins Building was designed as an
Art Moderne building by John Collins. There is a possibility that the building was designed by locally influential architect Gustav A. Pehrson. This building is a city, state and national historic site, having been placed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 19, 1998. The building is unique in Colville due to the fact that its façade faces, not the major street, but a pedestrian concourse.
From
WISAARD
The significance of the Collins Building lies in its architectural style and building materials, in its association with a prominent local building contractor, and in the evidence that it provides of this relatively isolated small town's participation in nationally important styles and trends. There is also the possibility, as yet unconfirmed, that it may represent the work of a regionally prominent architect.
Its Art Moderne style, simpler and more sparing in detail than the Art
Deco style from which it was derived, is said to be "symbolic of the dynamic Twentieth Century, speed machines" (Whiffin, 1996, p 331). It was thus an appropriate expression of programs intended to put the nation back to work and get its economic machinery moving on toward future prosperity. That the Moderne style of the New Deal public buildings was adopted in an even "purer" form by a private contractor in Colville illustrates the truth of the statement that this style "Penetrated deep into the vernacular of American building and appeared
in small towns everywhere" (Whiffin, ibid).
John (l.H.) Collins, the builder and original owner of the building that bears his name was apparently an influential man in the Colville area in the 1930s and 40s. He does not appear in the social columns of the local paper as frequently as most of his prominent contemporaries but this may be due to the fact that his local residence was on Mill Creek between Colville and Kettle Falls rather than actually in the city and that he moved to Walla Walla shortly after constructing the Collins Building. He was a well-known building contractor who poured most of Colville's sidewalks in the 1930s and the municipal airport in 1948. The Collins Building appears to be the only surviving structure of his creation in the downtown area. A second Collins constructed building, a single story jewelry store of a much simpler
design than the Collins building, once stood on Main Street about a block south of the Collins Building but was tom down in the 1980s.
The Stevens County Courthouse, an Art Deco structure was built in the
same year as the Collins Building with similar techniques and materials, was designed by noted Spokane architect Gustav A. Pehrson. Efforts to connect the Collins Building with Mr. Pehrson have been unsuccessful to date. He is known to have worked in Colville in 1937 and 1938 on the Courthouse. Local design expert Dennis Sweeny states that Mr. Pehrson did plans for at least one additional building in Colville which is not recorded in either Mr. Pehrson's scrapbook or his biography by William Hottell. He occasionally worked in the Art Moderne style and his known works have some features in common with the Collins Building such as use of glass blocks and brick sheating. It is possible that the Collins Building may be another unrecorded work of Pehrson's but no definite connection between Pehrson and the Collins Building has yet been demonstrated.