Hillcrest

A Boise neighborhood where postwar ambition, country club development, and Bench geography produced one of Idaho's most significant collections of mid-century residential architecture, and a real estate market that still operates on its own terms.

Forget Country Club Manor. In Boise, this neighborhood is Hillcrest.

The distinction is not cosmetic. Country Club Manor is a platted subdivision with ten phases of development east of Roosevelt Street and south of Hillcrest Drive, containing one of the largest concentrations of mid-century houses in the state.¹ Hillcrest is the broader neighborhood that contains it. The Hillcrest Neighborhood Association boundaries run from Overland Road on the north to Interstate 84 on the south, Curtis Road on the west, and Roosevelt Street and the New York Canal on the east.² Within that perimeter sit three functionally different residential zones, two elementary schools, two city parks, two churches, and the Hillcrest Country Club, a private 18-hole course that has hosted the Albertsons Boise Open, a Korn Ferry Tour event, every year since 1990.³

Country Club Manor survives in plats, in the language of the Ada County Assessor, and in the memories of the real estate firms that marketed it. Hillcrest is the name that stuck. But to understand what either name means, for architecture, for the Boise market, and for anyone considering a purchase here, it helps to know exactly what was built, who built it, and what the ground beneath it looked like before any of this existed.

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The land under the Hillcrest Country Club fairways was once a 160-acre homestead. Arthur De Wint Foote, a civil engineer from the East, purchased it in January 1892 in the northeast corner of Section 20, Township 3 North, Range 2 East.⁴ Foote had come to Idaho in 1883, hired by New York investors to survey a canal system capable of irrigating a half-million acres of desert bench land south of the Boise River. He envisioned a 75-mile main canal with 5,000 miles of lateral ditches.⁵ The project was called the New York Canal, and it was, for decades, a magnificent failure — underfunded, litigated, seized by competing irrigation factions, and left unfinished until the federal Bureau of Reclamation took it over after the passage of the Reclamation Act of 1902. On February 22, 1909, roughly three thousand people lined the canal below the new Diversion Dam to watch water finally flow at scale into the system Foote had surveyed a quarter century earlier.⁶

Foote's wife was Mary Hallock Foote, a nationally recognized author and illustrator whose work appeared in Scribner's Monthly, Harper's Weekly, and Century.⁷ She wrote The Chosen Valley in 1892, a novel drawn directly from the family's experience trying to build an irrigation empire in Idaho.⁸ Decades later, Wallace Stegner based his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Angle of Repose (1971) on Mary Hallock Foote's extensive personal correspondence, a literary appropriation that remains controversial among her descendants.⁹ A collection of her prints is on permanent exhibition at the Boise Public Library.¹⁰

The Footes eventually sold their homestead to Andrew Hervey Eagleson, and the property became part of a larger family operation that would shape the Bench for the next half century. The Eagleson family, farming stock from Ohio and Nebraska who arrived in Boise in 1890, acquired vast tracts across what is now Hillcrest. Ern Eagleson, who held an engineering degree from the University of Nebraska, served as Boise's city engineer for four nonconsecutive terms, was elected mayor twice (1919–1921 and 1925–1927), and was hired as chief engineer of construction for the New York Canal.¹¹ Two principal irrigation laterals serving the Hillcrest area, the Eagleson and Penninger, were completed before 1915.⁴ Without them, the Bench remained sagebrush desert. With them, it became farmland. And then, beginning in 1938, it became subdivisions.

The majority of the land within the present Hillcrest Neighborhood Association boundaries remained in Eagleson family ownership until that year. By 1958, every parcel had been platted.⁴

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The country club arrived first. In 1925, while Boise's new rail depot was under construction, Harry and John Eagleson proposed a golf club on the former Foote ranch. It would be called the Idaho Country Club. Membership was capped at a thousand, at $300 a head.¹² During a meeting to advance the project, Boise civic booster Peter E. Cavaney argued for the club in terms that still carry an odd resonance: "Boise has been nestled here by the hills for 50 years, and the world has been going by. We are the least-advertised city in the Northwest."⁴

George H. Otten, a European-trained golf course architect based in Portland, designed the original nine holes. Otten called the property the finest site for a golf links and clubhouse he had ever encountered.¹² The Spanish-style clubhouse was designed by J.E. Tourtelotte of the firm Tourtelotte and Hummel, the same practice that designed the Idaho State Capitol, the Egyptian Theatre, the Owyhee Hotel, the Carnegie Library, and scores of other public and commercial buildings that constitute much of early-twentieth-century Boise.¹³ Tourtelotte and Hummel have since donated their archive, 3,400 projects spanning 128 years, to the Idaho State Archives.¹⁴ Their involvement at Hillcrest was not civic charity. It was the assignment of the state's leading architectural firm to a project the city's establishment considered important.

The Idaho Country Club opened in 1926. It barely survived the Depression, but barely. In 1935, a group led by J.L. Eberle, a prominent Boise attorney who served as a commissioner on the Idaho State Bar from 1936 to 1939,¹⁵ and Ernest Day reorganized the property as the Boise Country Club. It was renamed Hillcrest Country Club in 1940.¹⁶ The second nine holes, designed by the noted Pacific Northwest course architect A. Vernon Macan, opened in 1958. Robert Muir Graves, another West Coast designer, later renovated the course.³ All three architects brought credentials from outside Idaho but built for the site. The par-71 layout plays to 6,825 yards from the back tees at an average elevation of roughly 2,800 feet above sea level. The course record of 59, twelve under par, was set by Russell Knox in 2013.³

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Developer Ernest Day was a member of the country club. Day Realty Company, founded in 1908, is still family-run in its fourth generation and still operates out of an office on South Robert Street in the Hillcrest area. It was Day who pushed the Country Club Manor subdivisions into existence, and it was Day who understood how to sell them.

In 1957 and 1958, Day persuaded the Home Builders Association of Southwestern Idaho and the Snake River Valley Electrical Association to stage the second and third annual Parade of Homes in the Country Club Manor subdivisions.⁴ The Parade of Homes was a marketing concept credited to the Salt Lake City Home Builders Association, which had held the first such event in 1946. Boise's inaugural Parade took place in the Highlands neighborhood in 1956.¹⁷ Day brought the next two to the Bench.

These were not casual open houses. The Parades drew thousands of visitors. They showcased demonstration homes, all-electric models promoted by Idaho Power and all-gas models by Intermountain Gas Company, and featured designs by regional architects and builders.⁴ The standout was a house called the "Ming Joy," designed by the Boise architectural firm of Grider and LaMarche. It earned recognition in Architectural Record as a Record Home of 1959, the only time in Idaho's history that a residence received that distinction.⁴ A publication that featured the work of Paul Rudolph and Josep Lluís Sert published a house on the Boise Bench.

Joe LaMarche, of Grider and LaMarche, went on to design residential and commercial work across the Treasure Valley for decades. A 1959 LaMarche home on the Bench is cited in Atomic Ranch as the first house purchased by a builder who later developed new mid-century–inspired construction in Boise.¹⁸ LaMarche's name belongs alongside the handful of architects who gave the Bench its postwar character: Nat Adams, who completed more than 700 projects in Idaho across five decades, designed Bronco Stadium, and served as Idaho AIA chapter president; Art Troutner, an architect-inventor who co-founded the Trus Joist Corporation, the company that created engineered wood products and grew to nearly a billion dollars in annual sales before its acquisition by Weyerhaeuser;¹⁹ Victor Hosford; Bradford Shaw; and Charles Hummel, the third-generation Hummel at the firm his family had led since 1910.²⁰ These were the people who drew the houses. The Parade of Homes was the mechanism that showcased them. Country Club Manor was where it happened.

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Country Club Manor's ten phases of development produced a housing stock that ranges in size from roughly 1,150 to 2,400 square feet,¹ a spread wide enough to place the neighborhood's northern, golf-course-adjacent homes and its southern, more modest ranches in entirely different market tiers. The subdivision runs from larger, more deliberately sited houses near the club down to traditionally sized residences and, as local agents frankly describe them, fixer-uppers. Typical features include hardwood floors, brick fireplaces, large windows, and the low-slung rooflines, Roman brick, lava rock, and exposed beams that recur across the Bench's postwar building stock.

The broader Hillcrest neighborhood is separated into three zones. North and adjacent to the country club: the luxury tier, where homes sit on extensive landscaped lots, setbacks are deep, and views extend to the Owyhee Mountains and the Boise foothills. Active listings in this zone currently range from the upper six to the low seven figures, with at least one 3.11-acre parcel listed at $3.85 million. East of Roosevelt Street and south of Hillcrest Drive: Country Club Manor proper, the mid-century core, where the housing stock dates primarily to the late 1950s and 1960s and prices in early 2026 center on the neighborhood-wide median. And between Orchard Street and Targee Street, surrounding Phillippi Park to the west: the oldest section, where homes date back to the 1930s and the mix is the most eclectic — original cottages, later infill, and contemporary construction all share the same streets.

This internal geography explains a pricing range that baffles anyone who searches "Hillcrest" on MLS without context. According to Redfin data from February 2026, the median sale price across the Hillcrest neighborhood was $440,000, up 0.7 percent year over year. The median price per square foot was $361. Homes sold, on average, in 33 days, down sharply from 61 days the prior year.²¹ For comparison, Ada County's overall median at year-end 2025 stood at $562,000, and homes countywide built 21 to 50 years ago, the exact vintage of Hillcrest's core stock, showed the strongest price appreciation of any age category.²² Mid-century homes in Ada County are appreciating faster than new construction. That is not a sentimental observation. It is a data point.

The Hillcrest market does not perform as a monolith. A standard three-bedroom postwar ranch in Country Club Manor lists in the mid-$400s. A renovated four-bedroom with golf-course frontage lists above $1.2 million. Both carry the same neighborhood label. The buyer who does not understand the three-zone structure will not understand the price.

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No one regulates Hillcrest's preservation. This is worth stating plainly.

Boise has ten designated historic districts. Hillcrest is not among them.²³ The neighborhood carries no HD-O (Historic Design District) overlay, which means there is no requirement for a Certificate of Appropriateness before altering a home's exterior. No review board evaluates window replacements, siding changes, additions, or demolitions. The 2007 Hillcrest Neighborhood Plan, prepared by the Hillcrest Neighborhood Association and adopted by the city, articulates a goal of promoting a land use density of four dwelling units per acre throughout the neighborhood, and it repeatedly emphasizes the importance of architecturally compatible infill.²⁴ But neighborhood plans are aspirational documents, not regulatory ones. The 4 DU/acre target has no binding force.

Meanwhile, the regulatory landscape has shifted. Boise's Modern Zoning Code, adopted in 2023 and implemented through 2024, places much of Hillcrest in the R-1C zone, Traditional Residential, which constitutes 25 percent of all land in the city.²⁵ Under the new code, duplexes are permitted with city review, and accessory dwelling units of up to 900 square feet can be built without additional off-street parking or owner-occupancy requirements.²⁶ Some parcels in or near Hillcrest are already designated "Compact" under the comprehensive plan, a classification that supports higher density than current zoning. At least two current Hillcrest listings are marketed explicitly as development opportunities, one a half-acre infill parcel zoned R-1C, the other a nearly one-acre lot in the "Compact" designation.

What preservation exists in Hillcrest is voluntary. Owners maintain original rooflines because they want to. Carports remain because no one has enclosed them yet. Roman brick and lava rock facades survive because the homeowners who bought these houses understood what they were buying. Preservation Idaho, the statewide nonprofit, operates a program called Idaho Modern, founded in 2010, funded in part by a grant from the City of Boise Arts and History Department, that has produced the Idaho Modern Field Guide, a practical document for owners and agents on the care and keeping of mid-century homes.²⁷ Country Club Manor is cited in the guide as a significant mid-century neighborhood. But education and advocacy are not the same as regulation. The buyer who wants certainty that the house next door will not be demolished and replaced with something incompatible will not find that certainty here.

This cuts in two directions. It means no bureaucratic process for renovations, no commission review for a kitchen update or window replacement. And it means no structural defense against the kind of teardown-and-rebuild cycle that has consumed mid-century neighborhoods in hotter markets. So far, Hillcrest's relatively moderate price tier, strong visual coherence, and active neighborhood association have provided a practical buffer. How long that holds, as Boise continues to grow and the new zoning code takes full effect, is an open question.

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The Boise Open is, nationally, the highest-profile recurring event associated with this neighborhood. The Albertsons Boise Open, named for the grocery chain that Joe Albertson founded in Boise in 1939, has been played at Hillcrest Country Club every year since 1990, the inaugural season of what is now the Korn Ferry Tour. It is one of only four original tournaments still on the schedule.²⁸ The purse started at $100,000; it reached $1.5 million in 2023 and settled at $1 million for 2025. Albertsons extended its sponsorship through 2028.²⁹

The tournament's alumni list includes Scottie Scheffler, who played the 2019 event before becoming the world's top-ranked golfer and a Masters champion. Tom Lehman, John Daly, Jeff Maggert, and David Toms all competed in the 1990 debut. In 2003, thirteen-year-old Michelle Wie became the youngest player in the tour's history at the Hillcrest event.²⁸ In 1963, the club hosted the Idaho Centennial Ladies' Open on the LPGA Tour.³

The Boise Open brings television coverage, gallery traffic, and annual charity contributions, with a record $3 million donated through the 2022 event alone.³⁰ For the surrounding neighborhood, the tournament is a week of controlled disruption and a year-round point of reference. Homes on the course edge carry a premium partly because of the landscape and partly because of the association. The tournament has received the Korn Ferry Tour's Most Fan-First Event award.³¹ Hillcrest Country Club's current membership stands at roughly 650, including golf and social memberships, with an average member age of 57.¹⁶

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The schools serving the neighborhood are Hillcrest Elementary (pre-K through 6th grade, roughly 362 students) and Owyhee Elementary (pre-K through 6th grade, roughly 265 students), feeding into South Junior High (grades 7–9, roughly 619 students) and Borah High School (grades 10–12, roughly 1,502 students).³² These are Boise School District facilities. Borah, the area's comprehensive high school, sits approximately two miles from the neighborhood center.

Access is a persistent part of Hillcrest's appeal. Interstate 84 runs along the southern boundary. Overland Road borders the north. Curtis Road defines the west edge. The Boise Airport is minutes away. Downtown Boise is a short drive north and downhill, off the Bench. The neighborhood offers proximity without the ambient intensity of being close to the urban core. It feels settled, a word that means something different here than it does in marketing copy. In Hillcrest, it means the infrastructure was built, the trees grew, the houses stayed, and the neighborhood was not interrupted.

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The Bench is a topographic fact. It is an elevated terrace, a geological bench in the literal geomorphic sense, created by the Boise River and raised roughly a hundred feet above the river corridor downtown.³³ Before irrigation, it was sagebrush and dry soil. After the New York Canal and its laterals delivered water, it became farmland.⁵ After the war, it became subdivisions. Hillcrest is one of those subdivisions, and the Bench's elevation gives it something the valley floor cannot: outlook. From the ridge along the New York Canal, which borders the neighborhood's southern edge, views open south and west to the Owyhee Mountains. From the golf course, the Boise foothills and downtown skyline are visible to the north. These views are not incidental to the real estate market. They are the reason the highest-priced homes in the neighborhood sit where they do.

The mature tree canopy, established over 70 years and acknowledged as a defining feature in every planning document and neighborhood association statement²⁴, softens the streetscape without obscuring it. Broad setbacks, curving streets, and predominantly one-story houses create a visual rhythm that distinguishes Hillcrest from the grid neighborhoods closer to downtown and from the newer subdivisions spreading south and west of the city. Even where individual homes have been altered or enlarged, the original low-profile logic of the neighborhood reads clearly from the street.

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Boise has roughly 11,000 homes built in the 1950s and 1960s.³⁴ They are spread across the Bench and foothills in neighborhoods that include Randolph Robertson, Rim Crest, Glen Haven, Winstead Park, Boise Heights, and the Highlands. Within that inventory, the architect-designed, collector-grade homes drawn by Troutner, Adams, LaMarche, Hosford, or Hummel account for less than one percent of the market.³⁴ Premiums are paid to acquire them. Premiums are spent to maintain them.

Hillcrest, and Country Club Manor within it, holds a large share of what remains. The neighborhood is not a museum district. It does not contain only significant architecture, and it does not need to. Its importance lies in range held together by coherence, the fact that a custom commission by Grider and LaMarche, a builder-spec ranch with good bones, and a modest three-bedroom with original hardwood all sit on the same curving streets, under the same canopy, at the same quiet grade. The neighborhood reads as postwar because it is postwar. Deep eaves, long rooflines, broad window panes, sheltered entries, low silhouettes, Roman brick, lava rock, cedar siding — these details repeat with enough consistency to constitute a visual language, and with enough variation to avoid monotony.

The Hillcrest Neighborhood Association describes itself as comprised largely of one-story single-family residences.³⁵ That plainness is the point. These are not showpieces positioned for architectural tourism. They are houses built during a specific period in Boise's growth, designed by architects and builders who shared a set of assumptions about domestic scale, and, in many cases, preserved by owners who understood the difference between renovating a house and erasing it.

For buyers drawn to Boise's mid-century stock, Hillcrest offers architectural interest without preciousness. It offers a documented history, the Foote homestead, the Eagleson subdivisions, the Tourtelotte & Hummel clubhouse, the Parade of Homes, and the Architectural Record distinction, which is verifiable, not invented. It offers a price range wide enough to accommodate first-time buyers in the Country Club Manor core and established buyers on the golf course rim. And it offers something that Boise's growth has made increasingly difficult to find this close to the airport, the interstate, and downtown: a neighborhood where the houses, the trees, the streets, and the proportions still belong to each other.

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References

1. Hillcrest Neighborhood Association. (n.d.). History. https://www.hillcrestboise.com/about/history

2. City of Boise. (n.d.). Hillcrest Neighborhood Association. Energize Our Neighborhoods. https://www.cityofboise.org/programs/energize/neighborhood-associations/hillcrest-neighborhood-association/

3. Hillcrest Country Club (Boise, Idaho). (2024, August 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillcrest_Country_Club_(Boise,_Idaho)

4. Hillcrest Neighborhood Association. (n.d.). History. https://www.hillcrestboise.com/about/history. Includes the Foote homestead record, Eagleson family history, Cavaney quote, Parade of Homes account, and subdivision plat timeline drawn from the Ada County Assessor and the Idaho State Historical Society.

5. Idaho State Historical Society. (n.d.). New York Canal history (Reference Series No. 190). https://www.nyid.org/files/55e868653/NY_canal_history.pdf

6. National Park Service. (n.d.). Idaho: Boise River Diversion Powerplant. https://www.nps.gov/articles/idaho-boise-river-diversion-powerplant.htm

7. Foote, Mary Anna Hallock. (1999, June 30). In Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Anna-Hallock-Foote

8. Libraries Linking Idaho. (n.d.). Mary Hallock Foote & Arthur De Wint Foote. Far Reaching Idaho Traditions. https://farrit.lili.org/people/mary-hallock-foote-arthur-de-wint-foote-in-idaho/

9. Mary Hallock Foote. (2026, February 6). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hallock_Foote

10. Morrison Knudsen Foundation. (n.d.). Foote Park Interpretive Center. https://mk-foundation.org/footepark/

11. City of Boise. (n.d.). Vista Neighborhood historic context. https://www.cityofboise.org/media/7073/vista-neighborhood-context-with-illustrations.pdf

12. City of Boise. (2007). Hillcrest Neighborhood Plan 2007. https://www.cityofboise.org/media/3616/hillcrest-2007.pdf

13. Tourtellotte, John E. (2025, July 18). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Tourtellotte

14. Hummel Architects. (n.d.). About Boise architects Hummel. https://hummelarch.com/about-boise-architects-hummel/

15. Idaho State Bar. (n.d.). Board of Commissioners. https://isb.idaho.gov/about-us/governance/boc/

16. Hillcrest Country Club. (n.d.). Head golf professional search. PGA Career Services. https://sites.google.com/pgahq.com/hillcrest-country-club-hp/home

17. Idaho Architecture Project. (2020, August 11). The Glenn and Grace Buettner Home. https://www.idahoarchitectureproject.org/properties/the-glenn-and-grace-buettner-home/

18. Atomic Ranch. (2025, January 22). Building modern in Boise. https://www.atomic-ranch.com/architecture-design/house-tours/building-modern-in-boise/

19. SBC Magazine. (2013, May). Trus Joist offspring using old playbook. https://www.sbcmag.info/news/2013/may/trus-joist-offspring-using-old-playbook

20. Idaho Business Review. (2019, January 15). Era-appropriate renovation key to preserving Boise's mid-century homes. https://idahobusinessreview.com/2019/01/15/era-appropriate-renovation-key-to-preserving-boises-mid-century-homes/

21. Redfin. (2025). Hillcrest, Boise housing market: House prices and trends. https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/503895/ID/Boise/Hillcrest/housing-market

22. Redfin. (2026). Boise housing market: House prices and trends. https://www.redfin.com/city/2287/ID/Boise/housing-market

23. City of Boise. (n.d.). Historic districts. Planning and Development Services. https://www.cityofboise.org/departments/planning-and-development-services/planning/planning-a-project/planning-process-overview/historic-preservation/historic-districts/

24. City of Boise. (2007). Hillcrest Neighborhood Plan 2007. https://www.cityofboise.org/media/3616/hillcrest-2007.pdf

25. BoiseDev. (2023, March 23). City of Boise, ID plans zoning code rewrite. https://boisedev.com/news/2023/03/23/boise-zoning-code-rewrite-2/

26. City of Boise. (n.d.). Modern zoning code user guide: Traditional Residential (R-1C). https://issuu.com/cityofboise/docs/pds-mzc-userguide-traditionalresidential-r1c

27. Preservation Idaho. (n.d.). Idaho Modern. https://www.preservationidaho.org/idaho-modern

28. Albertsons Boise Open. (2025, November 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertsons_Boise_Open

29. KTVB. (2025). This day in sports: Big step forward for Albertsons Boise Open. https://www.ktvb.com/article/opinion/columnists/scott-slant/july-7-2015-this-day-in-sports-albertsons-boise-open-move-september-korn-ferry-finals/277-280aac38-d807-41cb-8b9d-4a3d4e19b4c3

30. KTVB. (2022, August 18). 33rd annual Albertsons Boise Open underway at Hillcrest Country Club. https://www.ktvb.com/article/sports/golf/albertsons-boise-open-underway-at-hillcrest-country-club/277-c26bf92c-594f-455e-8088-93e7a4f679d7

31. Korn Ferry Tour. (2024, August 21). Albertsons Boise Open presented by Chevron: Pre-tournament notes. PGA Tour. https://www.pgatour.com/korn-ferry-tour/article/news/latest/2024/08/21/albertsons-boise-open-presented-by-chevron-pretournament-notes-storylines-korn-ferry-tour-finals

32. National Center for Education Statistics. (n.d.). Search for public schools. U.S. Department of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/

33. New York Canal. (2023, September 12). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Canal

34. Idaho Business Review. (2019, January 15). Era-appropriate renovation key to preserving Boise's mid-century homes. https://idahobusinessreview.com/2019/01/15/era-appropriate-renovation-key-to-preserving-boises-mid-century-homes/

35. Hillcrest Neighborhood Association. (n.d.). Home. https://www.hillcrestboise.com/

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