Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

3 degrees of separation

The house that now sits at 501 N Boyer Ave began its life on Second Street. It was built in 1908 next to the Page Hospital, photo below, which had opened a year earlier in 1907. We don't know exactly when but sometime in the 50's our house (excluding the chimney) was moved 10 or so blocks to the West to make room for the expansion of the Bonner General Hospital, which is still in operation today. The Page Hospital, also in the way of expansion, did not fare as well and was demolished in 1951.


The photo below is of a picture hanging in the Bonner County Historical Society Museum, taken in 1910. In it you can see the large Page Hospital and our house next to it. For those of you familiar with Sandpoint, the bridge you see in the foreground was built up to what is now the Cedar Street Bridge Market, formerly Coldwater Creek. (click on the photo to enlarge)


A closeup of the above photo, our house is in the center and you can see the third story windows of the Page Hospital to the left. The matching homes in the background were built to house the employees of the Humbird Sawmill; I've read that two of these are still standing today.

The only online source available notes that along with the Page Hospital, three homes were also occupying the land now under Bonner General: the Farmin house, the Allen house and the Pennington house. It states that all three of these homes were demolished but nothing about a relocation. I believe that either our house's relocation was simply excluded or it is an error and one of these three homes is ours. Unfortunately, I can't find any information or even a single photo of those homes to compare. What we do know is that our house was built next to the Page Hospital and was moved to make room for the hospital expansion in the 50's.

We purchased the house in 2006 from a family that had lived here for the prior 15 years. They bought the house from an elderly woman who had lived in the house her entire life and whose parents had built it which makes us only the third family to ever own the house in almost 100 years. The house next door was built by her brother and she sold it to our current neighbor when he passed.