Barbara Sidway and her husband Dwight spared the Geiser Grand Hotel, one of Baker City’s more iconic historic downtown buildings, from the wrecking ball 24 years ago.

Barbara Sidway hopes they can save a second structure, which happens to be right next door, from the same fate.

The Sidways bought the Geiser Grand, at the southeast corner of Main Street and Washington Avenue, in 1993, a quarter century after it closed.

The couple restored the dilapidated building, where the floors were littered with pigeon carcasses and water could be squeezed from wooden beams. They reopened the hotel, complete with a new cupola and clock, in 1998.

In 2004 the Sidways bought the adjacent structure just to the south, the two-story Crabill Building, which like the Geiser Grand was constructed in 1889.

Earlier this month, on the morning of Feb. 5, a heavy snow load collapsed part of the Crabill Building’s roof, causing extensive damage to the eastern side of the building, which faces Resort Street.

Barbara Sidway said Wednesday that although it’s too early to know whether the building can be repaired, she and her husband intend to do so if it’s possible.

“We are committed preservationists, and we will do everything we can to save the building,” she said. “I can’t promise anything, and I don’t have a timeline. We’ve proven ourselves capable of taking on major projects” — a reference to the couple’s $7 million restoration of the Geiser Grand.

There is at least some reason to be optimistic about the Crabill Building’s future, Sidway said.

Stewart Edwards, the Ontario engineer who worked with the couple on the Geiser Grand restoration, made a preliminary inspection of the Crabill Building on Feb. 6.

Edwards, who works with Engineering Northwest LLC, determined that the west side of the building, facing Main Street, is stable, Sidway said.

A report that the engineering firm submitted to the Baker City Building Department notes that the damage was mainly confined to the eastern one-third of the Crabill Building, and particularly the northeast corner.

“The remaining two-thirds of the building remained intact,” the report reads.

Sidway said she won’t be able to make any decisions about the building until Edwards can inspect the structure in more detail. And that can’t happen until workers have removed debris.

See more in the Feb. 17, 2017, issue of the Baker City Herald.