The Pend Oreille Mine and Metals Office Building is located in the town of Metaline Falls, in the northeastern corner of Washington state. It is a three-story, one-thousand-square-foot masonry building designed in a faintly Moderne style. The building occupies an entire lot and is situated along Grandview Street, behind a small commercial district, and adjacent to a residential area...
Designed by noted Spokane architect, Gustav Albin Pehrson, the nominated property has five elevations, the fifth occurring as a canted side which is oriented to the northwest, to the main street intersection. Dimensions are fifty feet by eighty feet. The first story is approximately thirty-five percent higher than the second and third stories. The first-story façade that faces the street features large "storefront" windows. The windows of the second and third stories are double-hung sash. The facades terminate in a three-inch parapet which conceals the flat roof. There is a single chimney built into the east wall of the building, which served the radiator system boiler.
The second and third stories do not extend over the southeast corner of the first story. Here, a flat roof with a parapet covers this portion of the first story, and contains a pyramid-shaped wire-glass skylight, approximately eight feet square. There is an access door to this roof from the second floor. At present there is a shed roof over this area that was installed by the previous owner. The building has a full basement with exterior vehicle access via a concrete tunnel under
the alley on the north side of the building. This was the town's first, and only "parking garage."...
The Pend Oreille Mines and Metals Office Building is significant as the property in Metalline Falls which most strongly conveys the important role of the industrial metals mining industry in this
corner of the state, and for architectural values associated with the Moderne movement as a work of the regionally important architect, Gustav Albin Pehrson.
The Pend Oreille Mines & Metals Office Building is both a well-preserved representative of the
high-quality, medium-sized commercial structures of its era, and an important relic of the
developmental era of the Metaline Falls area. Lewis Larsen's major role in the history of both the area and the Pend Oreille Mines & Metals Office Building is an interesting aspect of this very era
of industrial development—an era when many individualistic "captains of industry" left their mark.
Lewis P. Larsen was born in Denmark in 1876, and acquired a technical education there. He came to the United States in 1895, settling first in Salt Lake City where he worked as a cowboy, and then in mining. He came to the Inland Empire in 1897, locating in Wallace, Idaho where he
worked as a mining engineer. In 1900 he was associated with the Last Chance Mine in Northport, Washington, and became aware of the potential of the Metalines area. Larsen began acquiring property in the Metaline Falls area in 1906. He bought a number of mining claims and had them patented. The town of Metaline Falls was built on sections of three of these claims — Defiance, Spokane and Homestake, all of which were gold placer claims.
Larsen is credited with being one of the main pioneers in promoting and developing the Metaline Mining District; acquiring the land and laying out the town of Metaline Falls. He is remembered for founding the Larsen Realty Company and the town of Metaline Falls in 1910; promoting the extension of the Idaho and Washington Northern Railroad to Metaline Falls in 1910; providing the land for and being instrumental in the founding of the Inland Portland Cement Plant in Metaline Falls and the Metaline Falls Water and Light Company in 1910.
Larsen was a "mover and shaker," but is fortunes in mining enterprises waxed and waned over the years. During the good times, there was money to spend on high quality buildings and acclaimed architects. Larsen's first architect in Metaline Falls was Spokane's Kirtland Cutter.
Larsen was forced to sell his Cutter-designed "Rock House" to the cement plant early on, and never owned it again. Local lore recalls that Larsen lived in the Washington Hotel (which he did not own) until the owners told him he had to pay rent or leave!
The nominated property is the last intact property associated with Larsen's mining ventures and locally represents the rise of the Metaline area as an important mining district.
From the NRHP