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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Retired woman restores 1907 home of principal Hart

On a sunny afternoon the beveled, leaded-glass windows of this historic bungalow home shoot prisms of light across the living room, an effect that delights the current owner.

The previous owner of the 1907 home at 1314 E. Fifth Ave. had a crowbar at the ready, preparing to remove the windows and sell them. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that they were placed so solidly that he wasn’t able to get them out,” said Charlotte Collins, who has owned the home since 1988.

It was a wreck when she bought it, just before foreclosure. Seven layers of wallpaper had been covered with orange paint. Chickens lived in an upstairs bedroom and ducks had been swimming in the bathtub. The floors were in terrible shape.

“We took a full year off to work on the house,” said Collins, who did much of the repair and refurbishing work herself. “The bones were there. It just needed cleaning up and vision.”

She had always wanted to find a historic home that had not been redone and do it herself. But she had never taken on such a project before. She learned how to strip and hang wallpaper, upholster furniture, make mantle scarves and decorative lampshades, and even lay six pallets of pavers in a circular pattern to create an outdoor patio. She refinished and repaired the original woodwork, including the clear fir beams in the ceiling, hardwood floors and built-ins.

The lovingly restored bungalow is now filled with vintage furniture mixed with replicas, antique decorative accents as well as some look-alikes from stores such as Costco.

When she wanted to build a garage, a project that exceeded her capabilities, she arranged with carpentry students at Spokane Community College to construct one on a side lot as a class project. Collins also has formal gardens, a vegetable garden and her cherished pawpaw trees (she makes great pawpaw ice cream).

There were adventures along the way, such as discovering a jar with keepsakes within one wall, clearly put there by an early owner as a time capsule. A carpenter kept hearing footsteps upstairs when he was working alone there in the kitchen, and she also felt a friendly presence when she was wallpapering the living room. Ghosts?

“Well, I never felt anything ominous, more like my work was being overseen,” Collins said. “When the living room was done, when it was restored, I no longer felt the presence.”

In all, the one-and-a-half story home has the look and feel of its original construction and decoration, but completely renovated. That includes a modern heating and air-conditioning system and a kitchen that looks old-fashioned but satisfies an active cook and home canner like Collins. Collins lives there with her significant other, Ron Schoeffler, both of whom are retired.

When first constructed more than a century ago, the three-bedroom bungalow sat on the tree-lined basalt cliff overlooking Liberty Park, one of the city’s oldest and largest parks. Interstate 90 bisected the park when it was constructed in the 1960s and ’70s, and now the view from the full front porch is of multiple lanes of traffic – though freeway sounds cannot be heard inside, when windows are closed.

Henry M. Hart, his wife and two children were the first occupants of the home, moving in the year it was built. A Cornell graduate, Hart had come to the area to serve as principal of what was then Spokane’s only secondary school. The school building burned in 1910, and Hart is credited with getting Theodore Roosevelt to come lay the cornerstone of the new school, which opened in 1912, with the new name Lewis and Clark High School.

Hart was considered a visionary, believing the school to be a center not just for education but also culture. He led efforts to have a pipe organ and grand piano in the school’s auditorium so concerts for the public could be held there. He raised $40,000 to purchase paintings so school corridors could also function as an art gallery.

Hart is also credited with establishing summer school, adult education and tutoring for students having difficulty with their studies. He began a band, orchestra and a journalism program at the school. He served on a national committee to study secondary education and was president of the Northwest Association of Secondary Schools; he is generally credited with establishing Lewis and Clark as one of the finest high schools in the West under his tenure.

Hart lived in the bungalow the entire time he served as principal, 1907-36, and for his impact on education and for the home’s representation of a style from the early days of Spokane’s history, the Hart-Collins House was listed on the Spokane Register of Historic Places in 1990.