B&B business blossomed, kids grew at Greenbriar Inn

COEUR d’ALENE — People sometimes ask me if this house was “in the family” and I say no, as we did not inherit it. However, it has certainly been our family home.

Thirty-five years ago, I saw an ad in The Press for this house. We were living in Boulder and wanting to move to Coeur d’Alene. I had decided that I wanted to run a bed-and-breakfast after traveling in England and Scotland the year previous with my husband, Bob, and 7-year-old daughter, Gwen. Our travels were certainly enhanced by the personal experience B&Bs offered there.

So there I was, nine months pregnant, reading The Press in bed, and up popped the ad and a black-and-white picture of the Colonial Revival style house that we all now refer to as Greenbriar. I said to Bob: “I think this is it! So much like the places we stayed in the British Isles. Look, it has 14 rooms and the price is right! Please go check it out.”

A day or two later Bob was in Cd’A, and sent pictures overnight express back to me. He ended up putting an offer on the place, and we moved here three weeks later with our two-week-old baby boy, Sean, and 8-year-old Gwen.

Over time, we learned a lot about previous owners and previous uses of the property, which we have shared with many groups over breakfast, lunch or dinner. Built as a boarding house with a ballroom on the third floor, it was subsequently a bordello, a men’s rooming house (The Wallace Apartments), a set of 14 offices for Health Education and Welfare, and a Nunnery of sorts for a splinter group of the Catholic Church called the Tridentine Church — also known by local residents as the Blue Army because of the royal blue habits worn by the Sisters.

Many previous residents have come back to tour the property and have expressed their appreciation for the improvements we have made. The nuns especially seemed almost speechless, as their memories were of a far more bare-bones life in the house, with barely enough heat, as their only source was the fireplace on the main floor. I am told 33 nuns lived here as well as high school-aged students who studied during the day here.

A few years back, one of the novitiates who later became a nun wrote a book about her experience in the Tridentine Church back in the ’70s. She had a book signing in the garden three summers ago.

The house itself has so many good memories and feelings associated with it that our staff and customers have often exclaimed how comfortable they are here; sort of home-like in the best sense of the word.

Our children have been raised around guests who were strangers and many of whom became friends, some returning many times. Upon returning and finding our kids had grown and moved away, they seemed a bit disappointed, realizing that all things change.

We have so many memories of our kids here. My son set up a zip line between two trees at opposite ends of the garden, and zipped his way to a little tree fort that he set up above the gazebo, where he would while away the afternoon or evening as boys do.

In his teens he set up offices in the basement and ran a website design company there for several years until he finally began his career as a programmer. Today, he is a software architect, living in Rathdrum with his family.

My daughter played “house” on a much larger scale than most girls. She checked our guests in, cleaned their rooms, baked their breakfast breads, did their laundry and answered the phone, taking reservations in the kitchen before we used it for the restaurant.

She also was my live-in babysitter, because there was a 9-year difference between her and her brother. She was the best sister ever, who took her jobs seriously. Her caregiving skills as a pre-teen and teen translated well into her career today as a nurse: The head of Home Health for Panhandle Health District here in town, mother of six and grandmother of three. And yes she is really quite young in spirit and in fact, despite all of these responsibilities.

Over the years we have catered to or housed many artists and musicians: Carole King, Judy Collins, Chad of Chad and Jeremy (close friends with the Beatles), The Nylons (of Lion King fame) who serenaded us in perfect pitch harmony on our front porch after their performance.

Cirque du Soleil and a number of local celebrities have been our clients, which we have been asked to be discreet about and will honor. It has been fun preparing food for them, serving them, and finding out how human they truly are.

We have catered to several movies; one with David Carradine of “Kung Fu,” called “Midnight Sonata.” That job lasted so long that I thought I would expire.

Since our ownership, we have done three major remodels, adding nine bathrooms and a dining room on the west. But we have not altered the interior structure of the house itself, being careful to preserve it, as we were lucky enough to be placed on the National Historic Registry.

Since opening our restaurant and maintaining a growing catering business, we expanded into what was once an area used by outbuildings and a two-car garage. Today we have three commercial kitchens which serve our lodging guests, catering, and dinner guests. The roof above the dining room serves as our container garden for fresh vegetables and herbs that we use.

What is not known is how many lives have been touched by this place. I can only speak from our own experience, raising our children here, and in some cases, our children’s children here. So many employees have revisited years later, remembering their times here as a sort of segue between young adult and adulthood. Guests who married here have brought their children to marry here.

We have been a part of several successful re-marriages after the estranged couples met here.

We had a family reunion for the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the man who built this property. As is our custom, their heights and names are marked on our special “family growth” wall.

Several years ago, one of our favorite pianists, “Pearl,” who was in her late 80s, was performing here when somehow one of the dinner patrons connected her performance on their phone, streaming it to an old boyfriend who used to play with her in the ’40s, now living in a nursing home. Boy the tears were flowing then!

Who knows what tales these walls could tell! The house reminds me sometimes of that song “You’ve got a spell on me,” as it has captured the imagination of so many. Because it was built in 1908, it has seen all the world wars, the other pandemic of 1918-1919, the Great Depression, and of course the turbulent times unique to North Idaho. It has protected and served during some very remarkable times in our ownership. Hopefully it will continue to do the same in this most recent series of unfortunate events we call COVID, and beyond.

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For more information on purchasing the Greenbriar Inn, 315 E. Wallace Ave. in downtown Coeur d’Alene, contact: Marianne Ahrend, Keller Williams, 208-661-6486, or Bob McIlvenna, Keller Williams, 208-659-3133.