Location: 105 Columbia St NW
Downtown National Historic District; Wohleb?
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 Transit-Columbia Bakery Building today (2014), photo by Deb Ross |
The building is a well preserved and maintained example of early commercial architecture in downtown Olympia. It is not on the local register, but is listed as “Historic Contributing” in the National Olympia Downtown Historic District listing, and gives a built date of 1929, but no name for the building.
Documentation on this building is confusing. There are two inventories for the building: one, viewable on the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP) database, states it was erected in about 1911; the other, in the Olympia Heritage inventory, that it was built in 1929. There is also a reference in the former inventory to the involvement of architect Joseph Wohleb, although this attribution is given neither in the former inventory nor the National Historic District listing. Sanborn Insurance maps are equally confusing: there are two maps stamped November 1924, one of which shows this location as a used car lot, and the other the three-bay storefront currently in existence.
Although the DAHP inventory sheet calls this the Eads Transfer building, there is no evidence that Eads Transfer ever operated here (see Heritage Bank Building). The confusion may have resulted from a transcription error. The Olympia Heritage inventory calls the building the Overland Lunch building, which operated here in the 1930s. The 1965 assessor’s photograph of the Crocker Rubber Company Building also shows this building as occupied by Lassen Electric and the Salvation Army.
National Olympia Downtown Historic District
Olympia Heritage inventory (under name Overland Lunch)
DAHP inventory sheet, name Eads Transfer (Transit-Columbia), see note above re building name.
Copyright © 2022 Deborah Ross