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Built in 1909, the Hill-Hilscher
House is a fine rendition of the American Foursquare single-family house
type embellished in the Colonial Revival style, and was one of the first
and finest homes built in the Cannon Hill Addition in the southwest
section of Spokane’s residential South Hill area. With over 4,000
square feet of finished interior space, the Hill-Hilscher House is
expansive and well-reflects its Colonial Revival styling in original
details, including a formal symmetrical façade, symmetrical fenestration
patterns, narrow-width horizontal wood clapboard siding, prominent
cornice and frieze courses, a prominent front-facing Palladian window
dormer, and interior features such as a five-foot-wide grand interior
staircase, five-paneled wood doors, and pedimented window and door
hoods. The property was built for socially prominent Spokane residents,
Lulu Cornelia & Charles W. Hill, pioneer founder and “Spokane printer
and president of the C. W. Hill Printing Company,” which was organized
by Hill in 1908. In 1937 after her husband’s death, Lulu Hill gifted the
property in “love and affection" to daughter, Edna Hill Hilscher, and
her husband, E. Durand Hilscher, successor to Charles W. Hill as
president/general manager of the C. W. Hill Printing Company. In
traditions practiced by many socially prominent Eastern and Southern
United States families, the Hill-Hilscher House was, beginning in 1909,
home to Charles & Lulu Hill who later shared the property with their
daughter and son-in-law, who were residents of the house from 1920 to
1948. During E. D. Hilscher’s tenure in the house, the printing company
gained state and regional prominence as “one of the best-equipped
lithographing and printing departments in the Pacific Northwest," and
was later recognized as the first printing company in Spokane to install
a 10-ton “two-color offset press." One of the longest-running printers
in Spokane, the C. W. Hill Company was praised and applauded as a
“leader in modern equipment" and was responsible for printing hundreds
of thousands of books, pamphlets, and other publications for nearly 80
years. The Hill-Hilscher House achieved significance during its period
of significance from 1909 to 1948 in the context of “commerce” for its
association with Spokane printing leaders C. W. Hill and E. D. Hilscher,
and in the context of “architecture” as a fine example of the Colonial
Revival style and the American Foursquare house form. Architecturally
and historically
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