Goodbye to 'Dr. Fox's House'

COEUR d’ALENE — Dick Barclay grew up in the Sanders Beach area after his family moved there in the late 1940s. There were summer days of kids playing football in his front yard, baseball in another and swimming in Lake Coeur d’Alene. 

And then there was the basketball hoop in the driveway at the home of 14th and East Lakeshore Drive where Barclay and his buddies had many good battles. This was the central gathering place.

“It was the neighborhood basketball court,” he said.

The house, too, held many memories for the Coeur d’Alene man who still lives just a few blocks away from it. It was known as “Dr. Fox’s House” and belonged to the late Dr. E.R.W. "Ted" Fox and his wife, Ellen. Ted Fox was one of the area’s most beloved doctors. 

That’s why Barclay was disappointed to see it demolished last week. The 4,420-square-foot home built in 1925 sat on the half-acre lot for nearly 100 years. It was cleared to make way for a new home.

The land and house were valued at $4.3 million, according to the Kootenai County Assessor’s Office. It lists the owner as Julie N Forsyth Revocable Living Trust.

“I knew it was coming down,” Barclay said. “There was some sadness there.”

He accepted it as part of progress.

“You can’t stand in the way of it,” he said. “You can try, but there’s no legal way.”

Peter Luttropp lives near the old Fox home and is a member of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission. Like Barclay, he was sad to see it go, but added, “it’s just progress.”

The house had a long history

Historian Steve Shepperd said the Fox family occupied it from April 1947 until 2005. 

Shepperd wrote that Fox graduated from the University of Chicago Medical School in 1939, specializing in gynecology and obstetrics. He married Ellen, a nurse, and soon headed west, where they settled in Coeur d’Alene. Due to the small staff at Lake City General where he had been hired, he became more of a generalist in his practice. He became a member of the surgical staff and was well-respected in the community for his general medicine practice. 

“He delivered many of the babies that were born at Lake City,” Shepperd wrote. “By one count, he delivered north of 4,000 children — and it was not unusual for him to make house calls to care for his patients or make phone calls to check on their progress.”

Fox retired in 1996 at the age of 87 after 57 years of doctoring. Over the years, he wrote two books — “Family Doctor” and “The Joy of Healing” and wrote a regular health-related column that was published in the Coeur d’Alene Press.

He was noted for his gardening and his yard was always immaculately maintained, Shepperd wrote. For many years, he voluntarily planted and cared for flowers and bushes on a small area adjacent to the corner of Sherman Avenue where it met U.S. Highway 10, now East Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive) providing a well-landscaped east entrance to the city.

Dr. Fox passed away in 2002 at age 93.

The demolition of his old home was especially concerning for some locals, coming on the recent news reported last week in The Press that Blue Fern Development based in Redmond, Wash., is in the process of buying the Roosevelt Inn on Wallace Avenue with plans to demolish it and build townhouses. 

The building was home to the Roosevelt School, originally built in 1905. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was converted to an inn about 30 years ago.

Longtime owners John and Tina Hough have been trying to sell it with plans to retire. While previous deals have fallen through, this one is reportedly in escrow.

An online petition seeking to save it has more than 1,000 signatures.

Sandy Emerson is another local who grew up in the Sanders Beach area, a few blocks from the lake and spent summers at the home of Dr. Fox.

“We played basketball summer afternoons and evenings on the Fox’s garage side court off the alley many times,” he wrote.

Emerson said he appraised the house after Dr. Fox died. He said it had small rooms. The kitchen and bathrooms, woodwork and interior were well maintained and nicely done, but had not been updated since maybe the 1950s.

“It was charming to be sure, but its age and interior design and character indicated it was beyond its useful life for current standards,” Emerson wrote.

Still, seeing the lot without its famous two-story structure was like losing an old friend.

“A few of us walked down that morning and saw it was gone, all but a few last tall shrubs. They went, too,” Emerson wrote.