National Register Listing

Oregon Commercial Company Building

a.k.a. Howell's Cafe

40--50 E. Washington St., Huntington, OR

The Oregon Commercial Company Building, located on the south side of Washington Street at the center of Huntington in the central Snake River basin area of eastern Oregon, was completed in 1891. Construction commenced in the summer of 1890. A two-story,
organized building of brick masonry and timber frame construction, it is--even today--one of the few prominent buildings on the main street fronting the Union Pacific Railroad in this small shipping center on the historic route of travel through the Blue Mountains between the Snake River Canyon and the Columbia Plateau. The current population of Huntington is 525. At its high point at the turn of the century, the population reached 821.

The building is significant in the context of Huntington's period of greatest upbuilding, from about 1890 to the turn of the century. Its opening coincided with the year the town was incorporated. It meets National Register Criterion C as the largest and best-preserved expression of High Victorian Italianate architecture locally. Huntington was a former division point on the Union Pacific subsidiary line that connected the port of Portland to the transcontinental railroad system at Omaha.

The building has a footprint of 50 X 80 feet on a full basement. Its north-facing facade is articulated with touches of the Queen
over Italianate organization, specifically in the use of flat, variegated surface decoration and divided lights with many small panes. The facade is bisected by it narrow, central stairway bay which affords a street entrance to the upper story. Storefronts on either side of the central entrance bay have been variously remodeled. The former drug store on the west is a complete replacement within the structural bay. The eastern storefront, formerly the general mercantile store, conveys the historic period through recent refurbishment and shoring up of a failed foundation. It has the conventional recessed shop entry between display windows with beveled, or splayed plate glass panels. Originally, the shop fronts across the entire facade had multi-paned top lights with subdivided borders.

The upper facade is organized as wide two bays on either side of the narrow central bay. The bays are demarcated by pilaster strips that continue to the cornice built up of corbeling and denticulated string courses. The parapet is crowned by corner flues, or piers having corbeled caps, and by a central, triangular pediment with patterned and inset brickwork. Window openings of the upper story are arranged as a double tier consisting principally of Diocletian windows composed of paired, double-hung, one-over-one sash under Roman arched toplights with three-part vertical divisions and multiple, small, square panes. Above these are squat, rectangular segmental-arched windows with fixed glazing having a central mullion and border lights. Spandrels are decorated with corbeled patterned brickwork. In a free interpretation of the architrave molding that trims Italianate facades of the high style, string molding is carried across the front, between pilaster strips, to frame the contours of round and segmental arches.

About 1930, the general mercantile and drug store spaces were remodeled as a restaurant (Howell's Cafe) and l with consequent partitioning of kitchen and game room spaces. Ceilings were lowered, and non-historic wall coverings were introduced. Second-story boarding rooms remain as originally configured. They are arranged symmetrically in the front around the central stairhall and in a single and double loading on the east and west sides of an offset corridor toward the back of the building. Interior finish work includes pl tongue-and-groove wainscot, beaded, or channeled architraves with bull's-eye corner blocks as door and window surround, and high baseboards with crown molding.

None of the historic buildings associated with Huntington's once-bustling railroad yard is standing today. It is on that account that the Oregon Commercial Company Building meets National Register Criterion A as a rare and prominent vestige as a railroad town. The building was erected, in part, as a place to house railroad workers. Once the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company line from the main travel corridor along the Columbia River was joined to the Union Pacific's Oregon Short Line subsidiary from Granger, Wyoming, Portland was firmly connected to the transcontinental system and its position as a port of regional importance was secure. "Last spike" ceremonies were observed at Huntington, the connecting point, in November 1884. Beginning the following month, trains began regular hauling of freight and passengers between Omaha and Portland. Huntington's economy depended largely on its role as a division point on the Union Pacific system, and from 1891 onward the Oregon Commercial Company Building continued its close association with railroading as a boarding place for trainmen and maintenance crews as well as a retail center for passengers.

The spearhead of the building project appears to have been John H. Aitkin, a stockholder and store manager of the Oregon Construction Company which was engaged in constructing the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company Railroad from the Columbia Plateau to its Oregon Short Line connection in the Snake River basin on the east slope of the Blue Mountains. Aitkin had come to the newly platted town of Huntington in 1888 from Michigan. Together with R. M. Steel and G. A. Steel, he incorporated the Oregon Construction Company to take over the operation of the commercial building in 1894, and the building remained under Aitkin's management until 1908. Aitkin had been the founder and president of the town's first bank, the Bank of Huntington incorporated in 1897, and he served as Huntington's mayor from 1892-1894.

The subject building, after its sale to F. S. Bubb in 1908, was operated as the Huntington Mercantile Company until its closure in 1928. The conversion to restaurant and lounge use proceeded in the 1930s. Beginning in the 1970s, the Union Pacific facilities were closed locally and Interstate Highway 84 bypassed the town. Standing opposite the historic site of railroad operations, the Oregon Commercial Company Building looms as the most imposing building of brick construction on the main street. It is being readied for use as a bed and breakfast hotel.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1992.