The two-story, wood-frame building currently sits adjacent to Holly Park on the south side of NE Lockwood Creek Road to the east of downtown La Center. The building originally stood at East 4th and Cedar in downtown La Center and was moved approximately one half-mile east in 2001 to be adaptively reused as a library. The original site is now occupied by a gas station. 

The building is associated with Dr. Charles Zener who moved to La Center in 1905 and established a general medical practice, including treating logging and sawmill accidents and tuberculosis patients. In 1907, he purchased a building lot and completed construction of the building that he used as his residence and hospital/convalescent center.

The Charles and Frances Zener Residence and Hospital is the first known building in La Center to house a medical treatment facility and is the only remaining example of the American Foursquare style in La Center. The Zeners lived and worked in La Center until early June 1910. After the Zeners left, the home variously served as a rental residence, a hotel, an appliance repair store, laundromat, apartments, and a furniture store.

The Zener home/hospital stood empty in 1999 and was identified for possible burn practice for the local fire department as the site was planned for development. Community leaders and library staff banded together in 2001 to create La Center’s first permanent library branch to replace a bookmobile service and a temporary library. Civic activist and preservationist Margaret Colf Heppola identified the Zener house as a potential location for the library and worked to save it. 

In August 2001, the Zener house was moved one-half mile to its current site on land donated by the Colf Foundation. Rehabilitation work began to turn the former medical facility and residence into a library, which opened to the public as a library in May 2004. The 3,380 sq ft La Center library branch is the 13th library in the Fort Vancouver Regional Library.

The nomination to the Clark County Heritage Register is only for the building itself and not the surrounding property.

• Listed in the Clark County Heritage Register (2017)
• Zener House Nomination