History highlights of the Greenbriar Inn

• The Greenbriar Inn was built in 1908 by Harvey and Carrie Davey. Harvey Davey was a bricklayer who moved here from Sandpoint, and, because of his wife's longtime ambition to own and run a boarding house, he decided to build their home at commercial scale, to show his abilities as a mason. In the years that followed, he built many of the buildings in the downtown Coeur d'Alene area: most were churches, schools or government buildings. His "signature" was the way he laid the bricks at the top of the windows.

• The Greenbriar Inn is now on the National Historic Register. It is listed as the Harvey Davey House. This structure was included on the register for a number of reasons. First, it is one of the few if not the only homes in this area that is a large brick structure. It has been built in the "Colonial Revival" style, which mimics the Colonial and English style homes found in New England and Northern Europe.

• In the late 1920s the Daveys sold their house and retired in Oregon. They sold it to someone who subsequently sold it to the mayor's mistress. During the 1930s this house was run as a bordello. In fact - according to one retired county sheriff that toured the Greenbriar in 1987 - it was the most successful bordello in Coeur d'Alene, because it was a "protected house," meaning that the sheriff's office, which at that time was three blocks away, on Government Way and Wallace, both patronized and protected this house from raids.

• In the 1940s the house was a men's rooming house, largely populated by people working on the Burlington Northern Railway that passed through this area. The now-closed restaurant known as Las Palmitas, on third and Coeur d'Alene was once the Railway Station here in Coeur d'Alene.

• In the late '70s, this house, as well as many others in this area were bought by the Tridentine, or Latin-rite Church. This house was used as a Nunnery, and more than 30 nuns lived here. Also, it was used as a pre-school. The order purportedly failed to make payments, and in the early '80s the owner took the property back.

• When Bob and Kris McIlvenna purchased the house in 1984, it was in ill-repair. Several pipes had burst on the third floor and there was water damage, due to freezing and thawing. The basement was basically uninhabitable, with no running water or toilet.

The first thing they did was remove the pink and red paint. That winter, they repainted and fixed up the exterior and interior, as well as adding another six baths. There are now nine bathrooms, total, in the house. They matched the woodwork to the original woodwork design of the turn-of-the-century architecture.