This house is located on Warm Springs Ave. It is built in the classic Queen Anne style popularized by a group of 19th-century English architects led by Richard Norman Shaw. Of all the Victorian house styles, Queen Anne is the most elaborate and the most eccentric. The style is often called romantic and feminine. This house shows the typical characteristics of this style with its “?Gingerbread,” Eclectic detail, Fish scale shingles, chimney and front porch. This beautiful Queen Anne style home, nicknamed “Painted Lady” because of her 5 different colored paints, was designed in 1880 by J.E. Tourtellotte for Edward Payne, Esq., and cost $2,600 to build. Although there is no way to be positive, for most of the records for the home were burned before 1900 when city hall burnt down, the home is believed to have been built in 1897, even though other records show that the property was purchased in 1880. The house features 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a turret, full basement, and a paned-glass windowed spa room with a built in hot tub.The house has had 12 owners, many of whom have done extreme renovations to the home. The Murray Burns family owned the house from 1937-1954, dug a full basement below the house, enclosed the wrap around porch, and added a fireplace to the living room. They also had to restore the kitchen when their sons dropped a weight in the bedroom upstairs that crashed through the ceiling into the kitchen. The Curtis Jones family purchased the home in 1954 and lived there for 28 years, during which they added the 1000 sq. ft. spa room off the kitchen. The current owners, Thomas and Mary Glynn Wilford, have acquired the original floor plans for the house, and have them on display in their formal dining room. Because of the extensive additions to the house, its size has nearly doubled; originally 2200 sq. ft., the house now boasts 4800 sq. ft. of sheer beauty. Mary Wilford?s favorite feature in the home is its large, traditional, open dining room. She says that although she loves the dining room and its welcoming feeling, everyone else seems to want to see the turret upstairs
Like most of the houses on Warm Springs Ave., the house is heated by geothermal energy. It is also believed to be the first house on the street with indoor plumbing (although there is some dispute over this with the neighbors). The house has a “cold storage room,” a room with thick concrete and metal walls that are almost 6 inches thick. The previous owner, Ronald Bland, restored the clock on the Boise Train Depot when he moved here to Boise from California in 1991. Marvin Allred was born in this house, and is the son of Baron Harvey Allred, a legislator from Blackfoot who rented the house for three years. It is homes like this “Painted Lady” that give character to Warm Springs Ave. and all of Boise, Idaho.
Idaho Architecture Project
