Colfax home added to National Historic registry

Once the center of Colfax high society, the 1914 Florence Ferguson house on N. Mill Street was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Ann Marra and Tim Ely are the third owners of the house and have spent much of the past decade enhancing and bringing back some of the original charms built into the unique home.

“In our minds, we are simply stewards with the privilege of enjoying this beautiful house for a time,” said Marra.

The home, a blend of turn-of-the-20th Century architectural designs, is beautifully crafted with double pocket doors in the foyer, a lush Honduran mahogany staircase that greets visitors just past the front door and delicately crafted small-pane windows.

As part of their preservation efforts, Marra and Ely have repaired and used the home’s original light fixtures and restored its kitchen from modifications made in the middle of the last century.

Michael Houser, the state’s architectural historian, said the main benefit of a national listing is that it turns a spotlight on an area’s historically significant or unique architecture.

Debbie Snell, chair of the city’s historic preservation advisory board, said the national listing will likely bring into Colfax an infusion of tourists. History buffs and photographers, she said, often contact the city to photograph its historic landmarks, and having the Ferguson home on the national list will add for them another draw.

“Just like there’s ‘Star Trek’ geeks, and ‘CSI’ geeks and ‘Lost’ geeks, there’s a lot of history geeks who travel to nationally historic homes,” said Snell, a self-confessed “Star Trek” and history geek.

The home was built for Florence H. Ferguson following the death of her husband, Dr. T.D. Ferguson. Mrs. Ferguson commissioned master builder Nis Skow to build the home at a cost of $7,000.

Skow built several Colfax homes after the city saw a building boom in the wake of the great flood of 1910. He built homes for some of the most prominent members of Colfax society, including jeweler O.C. Glaser, F.A. Russell, owner of the Great Eastern Department Store, and Chas. McKenzie, who ran the Colfax Electric Light Company with Nicholas Codd.

Mrs. Ferguson’s new Mill Street home quickly became the center of the city’s social scene after she moved in.

Stories published in the Gazette tell of lavish parties Mrs. Ferguson threw to mark holidays like Independence Day and to honor soon-to-be brides or mothers.

One year, Mrs. Ferguson threw a fantastic Halloween party, bringing in fortune tellers, and allowing guests to shoot arrows into a bucket of apples, which had the “cores hollowed and a ladies’ name written upon a slip of paper.”

Her “Humpty Dumpty” Easter party brought in 30 guests who enjoyed any number of egg dishes and cooled their drinks with ice “frozen in the form of Easter lilies.”

Mrs. Ferguson lived in the home until her death at the age of 95 in 1963. Her daughter Bessie, who earned a music degree from Stanford in 1914, sold the home for $16,500 to E.E. and Pearl Akin, who lived the home until selling it to Marra and Ely for $136,500 in 2000.

The home was added to the state’s historic registry last year.

Three other Colfax properties on the national register are the post office, the Perkins House and the Heilsberg Homestead at Wilcox.