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Roseberry founder Frank Eld to restore 120-year-old Boise home in retirement
"Frank is the kind of person who can do the work and do the work right."
—Dan Everhart
BY TOM GROTE
The Star-News
The first time Frank Eld walked into the historic Jones house near downtown Boise,he had a special
feeling.
1 said, this is my house,-Eld said.1 call it my bucket house."
If all goes according to plans,the house will soon be relocated from its current location on Fifth Street
to a lot that Eld is in the process of buying on nearby Reserve Street.
The move will coincide with the relocation of Eld and his wife,Kathy,from the Valley County Museum
at Roseberry,which Eld founded 46 years ago.
At age 69,Eld has decided to retire as the"unofficial mayor"of Roseberry who presided at the
Roseberry General Store during summer months and who passed around his bowler hat during the
Summer Music Festival at Roseberry each July.
Eld has put both the store and his home in Roseberry up for sale in order to move to Boise to be
closer to family members living there.
1 intend to live in this house eventually,"Eld said of the two-story,1,400 square foot Jones house,
which was built in 1893 with three bedrooms,three bathrooms,a dining room and a parlor.
One of Five Homes
The Jones house is one of five historic homes in the Central Addition parcel that Boise developer
LocalConstruct wants moved to make way for a planned seven-story,160-unit apartment building.
Eld found about the Jones House through his work with Preservation Idaho,a nonprofit organization in
Boise of which he is treasurer.
Eld become involved with Preservation Idaho when he won an Orchid Award from the group in 2010
for"Heritage Stewardship."
"We can't do it without him,said Dan Everhart,architectural historian with Preservation Idaho."He is
pretty indispensable as a board member and as an advocate."
His planned retirement to Boise and the need to move the Jones house was a happy coincidence,
Everhart said.
"There were not scores of others lined up to do this,"he said."Frank is the kind of person who can do
the work and do the work right."
LocalConstruct hopes to find sponsors to supplement the money it will commit to move the Jones
house,project manager Jason Osterburg said.
Current plans are to move the house by early July,Osterburg said.
"Frank's passion for something like this is hard to find,"he said of Eld's proposal for the Jones house.
"He had done his homework and his track record of restoration was bar none."
In 1969,Eld spent part of his savings to buy the old general store in Roseberry.Then age 23,he
dreamed of fixing up the building once operated by Basil Holland McDougal and returning it to a working
store.
In the four decades since,Eld and a legion of volunteers of the Long Valley Preservation Society have
worked tirelessly to transform the townsite into the complex of historic buildings that collectively is called
Historic Roseberry.
Eld estimates he has moved more than two dozen historic buildings from their original locations to
Roseberry,with most of them restored and open to visitors.
More Work Planned
Although he is leaving Roseberry,Eld is not retiring from his lifelong work preserving Finnish culture.
He will continue his work with the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation,a volunteer organization in Delaware
that built,owns,and operates the tall ship Kalmar Nyckel.
The Kalmar Nyckel served as the flagship for the 1638 expedition that founded the colony of New
Sweden,which included the first Finnish settlers in America.Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden
at the time.
He also is helping to design a Finnish room to be part of the Nationality Rooms at University of
Pittsburgh,Penn.,which are designed to represent the culture of various ethnic groups that settled in the
region.
http://www.mccallstarnews.com/pages/fp_stories_page.php 4/16/2015