Walla Walla architect Harold Emmons Crawford was born in Grinnell, Kansas on June 1, 1890. He came to the city as a teenager with his family via Fairmont, Nebraska in 1904. After graduating from Walla Walla High School, he attended Whitman College, and graduated cum laude in 1911. His interst in architecture led him to MIT where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in architecture in 1913. His thesis was a treatie on the cost and construction of small factory buildings, comparing reinforced concrete buildings with traditional slow-burn wood construction methods.
Upon graduation he to Walla Walla and established an independent architectural practice. One the site he served as chief architect for the Tum-A-Lum Lumber Company (a subsidiary of the family business; the Whitehouse & Crawford Company). With the help of Crawford, the company offered a free plan service for their customers in hope that they would buy products for the construction of 
their business, agricultural building, and/or home from the lumber yard. While no specific plan book designs by the company have been identified in Walla Walla, the company had a wide reach in the Inland Northwest; operating over 40++ retail yards in Eastern Washington, and Oregon. Crawford remained head of the architectural services department into the 1940s and became Vice President of the company upon his father’s death. Unfortunately records for the company, along with Crawford’s Office files were destroyed by a fire in 1960.
In 1919, when Washington and Oregon began licensing architects, Crawford received Washington license No. 34, and Oregon license No. 101, under the grandfather clause. Reportedly he designed a number of buildings on the Whitman College Campus however, his only verified designs are the Braden-Bell Building (c.1925) in Walla Walla; the C.J. Breier Building (1926) in Walla Walla; the City Hall/ Fire Station (1927) in Pomeroy; and a shop addition (1944) to Weston School in Weston, Oregon.
Active in social circles, Crawford was a member of the Whitman College Board of Overseers, and played the cello in the Walla Walla Symphony from its inception in 1907. He was also an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Whitman College in 1959.
Crawford died in Walla Walla on June 28, 1980 at the age of 90.
By Michael Houser, State Architectural Historian - Dec. 2011
