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Architect George B. Purvis, designed the Columbia Theatre for the Longview real estate developer, R.A. Long, and a syndicate of 40 other city business figures, under the name of the Columbia Theatre Amusement Company. The Columbia Theatre seated 1,100 patrons when it first opened on 04/04/1925. Olympic Construction Company served as the Building Contractor. David Naylor, in his book American Picture Palaces, (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1981), p. 217, indicated that the Columbia seated 1,200 and had been razed by 1981, which was incorrect. Local owners sold the theatre to the Sterling Theater chain of Seattle, WA, in 1945. The theatre was on the brink of demolition but this was averted; the theatre's web site recounted the story in 2010: "In the spring of 1980, a wrecking crew stood ready to tear the building down, reduce it to rubble, destroy the magnificence and the charm, the majesty and the history of the Columbia Theatre. When Mount St. Helens exploded on May 18, 1980, it not only blew a large chunk of itself to smithereens, but it literally made sure the same thing didn't happen to the Columbia. The contractor hired to demolish the building was called to other duties after the volcano dumped millions of tons of ash and debris over the Lower Columbia region." Following this providential event, the City of Longview bought the theatre in 1983 and mothballed it until the mid-2000s, when plans developed to reuse it. A non-profit community group leases the facility from the city and engages a management company to run it.

Civic, Cultural, and Commercial Resources of Longview TR: This Classical Revival Style theatre is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, level of significance: Local. The Columbia occupied the corner of a four-story, mixed-use office building on a main street of Longview, WA.

A renovation occurred in the theatre between 1930-1933. A snack bar was added in 1948. For detailed information on the alterations of the Columbia Theatre (up to the year 1985), see the Survey-Inventory Form (listed as a website) prepared for the State of Washington's Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. From c. 2007-2010, a restoration effort costing $11.3 million occurred, lowering the seating capacity from 1,100 to 800, but updating critical building systems. The theatre reopened with a performance by the Smothers Brothers in 02/2010.

The Columbia was sold by local owners to the Seattle-based Sterling Theaters in 1945 and remained owned by them until the City of Longview obtained it in 1983. The city leases it to a nonprofit organization of local citizens which hires a professional manager to run it.