Brightening the walls of my home office are photographs from some of my Destination Idaho stories, a drawing by Statesman artist Patrick Davis – and a watercolor painting of an old cafe.

Why the cafe?

Easy. It’s Manley’s.

Everyone who remembers Manley’s remembers it fondly. It was a local treasure. And soon the site of the little cafe with the big reputation will become Boise’s newest park.

Terry Day Park, on Federal Way just east of Protest, will open June 5. Initially it will be a grassy area with a pond, a walking path, trees and a small parking area. Future additions will include a playground, restrooms, tennis courts and a larger parking lot off of Overland Road.

The late Terry Day was a longtime Boisean known for volunteer work. gardening and love of tennis. She and her husband, Pat, lived in the house next door to Manley’s, where Pat, 88, still lives today. The Day family donated land and money for the eight-acre park, and Day also has donated his home to be used as a community center there after his death.

“It will be a great thing for the city,” park development coordinator Kelly Burrows said. “We’ll have a new neighborhood park in a part of town that really needs one. A new park on the Bench has been a priority, and the Manley’s connection is a nice bonus.”

For those who missed it, Manley’s was more than a cafe. To look at it, you wouldn’t have guessed that. For that matter, you probably would have driven by without stopping. It was just a little white building, old and borderline shabby, with faded paint a patina of grease.

But the food!

Or rather, the enormity of the food. Not that it wasn’t good, because it was, but the portions were legendary.  If you wanted fancy food, you went somewhere else. If you wanted plain but tasty food – and lots of it – you went to Manley’s.

Its founder and longtime proprietor was W. Manley Morrow, an old-time chef and avid carnivore who prided himself on selecting the best meats, cured and aged to perfection. He opened the cafe in the early 1950s as Manley’s Rose Garden. In those days, it actually had a rose garden. One of my earliest memories is of dining there with my parents, enjoying the world’s best hamburgers at picnic tables surrounded by beautiful roses.

Good as they were, though, it wasn’t burgers that made Manley’s famous. Its tours de force were prime rib and pie a’la mode, served in eye- and stomach-popping portions.

Pat Day, who knew Morrow well, said he was “raised on a farm, and when he started the restaurant there were a lot of farmers in and around Boise. I think that was the basis of those huge portions. Farmers worked hard and ate big meals. He cooked that way for them and because that’s the way he was raised.”

Manley’s prime-rib dinners draped over the edges of the platters on which they were served – and they were big platters. For a couple of extra bucks, you could order prime rib for two – a larger portion (as if it was necessary) with an extra plate. Even a single portion was more than enough for two people. You ate until you couldn’t eat any more, and took the rest home for dinner the next night.

The pie was homemade, scrumptious. And, like everything else at Manley’s, the size of the servings never failed to elicit “oohs” and “aahs.” Imagine a quarter of a pie topped with half a quart of ice cream and you’ll have the right mental image – old-fashioned pies with rounded crusts and fat with fillings, the kind your great grandmother used to make.

Locals loved to take out-of-town visitors to Manley’s and watch their eyes bulge. Rumor had it that Jascha Heifetz, the violin virtuoso, agreed to return to Boise for a second performance just to eat at Manley’s again.

When Calvin Trillin, then the New Yorker’s food reviewer, came to town to research one of his U.S. Journal stories and was using the archives at The Statesman, we took him to Manley’s for lunch. His eyes widened as he took in the broken screen door, worn linoleum and greasy everything. Then he smiled and confided that he wasn’t a native New Yorker, let alone a food snob. He was a Kansas City native who loved honest, unpretentious food.

“Every town I go to, they take me to the restaurant in the glass ball on the top floor of the tallest building in town,” he said. “The prices are outrageous, and the food is awful. This place is great!”

To the dismay of its many fans, Manley’s closed in 1997. Morrow’s wife, Marge, ran the cafe after he died. Then their son ran it briefly and sold it to two of its waitresses, who ran it into the ground. The cafe that had brought so much enjoyment to so many was demolished not long afterwards.

Soon after that, the mail brought me a unique gift – the watercolor painting of Manley’s. It was long enough ago that I’ve forgotten the artist’s name, but I’ll always be grateful to him. He did the painting during the restaurant’s last days, after it had closed but before it was knocked down – a measure of its impact. How many doomed cafes have artists painting them?

Day still has the wooden Manley’s sign that greeted its customers.

“We hope to incorporate it into the design of the park,” Burrows said.

A great idea. It would be even better if the design included a plaque or a sign telling the Manley’s story. Too often our beloved institutions fade from the scene and are forgotten. Manley’s deserves to be remembered.

“An interpretive sign would be a good thing,” Burrows said. “Manley’s hasn’t been available to the public for a long time, but that way people could come to the park and experience it in a new way.”

 

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in the Idaho Statesman’s Life section and is posted on http://www.woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.

 

Public art for the plaza at Boise City Hall, according to a recent Statesman headline, is “back on track.”

We can only hope.

When it comes to such projects, Boise has a history of being so far off  track that the result can be as much public outrage as public art.

Northwest Passage, for example. Remember that? Originally titled “Point of Origin,” it consisted of three sterile-looking rectangles in the same plaza the city is attempting to beautify with yet another piece of public artwork. Reaction was so negative – a  Statesman story at the time characterized it as “near apoplexy” – that it was moved to Julia Davis Park, where it remains today.

Northwest Passage was touted as evoking our history. Somehow those mystifying metal rectangles were supposed to inspire visions of Lewis and Clark, Capt. Bonneville or, for all the average person knew from looking at them, Chief Seattle.

The most historic thing about them may have been the sales pitch the artist used in talking the city into buying them. The only visions they inspired for me were of geometry class.

One of the most controversial examples of public art in Boise, of course, is that which confronts passersby at the corner of Capitol Boulevard and Front Street. This is one of the most, if not the most, prominent intersections in the city. It deserves something inviting. Something tasteful. Something beautiful.

So what do we have – assaulting us daily from the front of the Grove Hotel?

The steaming crack.

When it was unveiled, to considerable fanfare, I thought it looked like a geothermal weed – a vinelike monstrosity on an electric-blue background oozing steam. Its only saving grace was that the steam partially obscured the ghastliness of it. Now the paint is chipped and faded and even the placating steam is gone.

The crack was billed as a vertical river honoring water, “the lifesource of Boise,” but let’s be honest. Have you ever once walked or driven by it and observed, “My, what a lovely likeness of our lifesource!”

Of course you haven’t. It doesn’t look at all like a lifesource. It looks like what it is – a rundown, ill-conceived, formerly steaming crack.

An architectural firm is reassessing the crack in the hope that it can be renovated.

Here’s an idea. Forget renovating it. Take it out and start over. Fill in the crack and replace it with something that will require less maintenance and actually be attractive. What law says public art has to be ugly, weird, or both.

Speaking of weird, what about those ridiculous wings on the parking garage at the airport? They looks like mosquitoes trying to lift an anvil.

This is not to say that Boise doesn’t have good public art pieces. We’re fortunate to have a number of them:

Ann LaRose’s charming “Keepsies” sculpture, for example – the one of children playing marbles near the fountain on the Grove. And, though not art per se, the fountain itself. If there’s a better example of interactive public art in Boise, I haven’t seen it.

Amy Westover’s “Grove Street Illuminated,” the aluminum circles inscribed with historical photos and texts at Ninth and Grove. Not only is it interesting visually, you can learn a fair amount of local history from it. (Wouldn’t it be nice if the developer of nearby Bodo had included a fitting memorial to that area’s rich history? If you’re listening, Mark Rivers, it’s not too late.)

The new replica of Gutzon Borglum’s seated Lincoln in Julia Davis Park  inspires respect for one of our greatest presidents without being even slightly off-putting. I seldom pass it without stopping or at least slowing down. On successive visits, I’ve seen grownups reverently contemplating Lincoln’s legacy and laughing children snuggled up to the former president as if he were a beloved grandfather. You can’t ask much more of a sculpture than that.

A panel has selected three finalists from more than 50 artists or art groups that have applied to do the new piece for City Hall Plaza. You can see what they’ve come up with beginning May 11, at City Hall or on the city’s website, and will have two weeks to tell the city what you think.

That’s important. If, like me, you’ve bellyached about some of the lemons chosen in the past, this is your chance to influence a choice.

The panel that selected the finalists will name the winner, who will then have to win the approval of the city’s Visual Arts Committee, Arts and History Commission, the Capital City Development Corp. and ultimately the city council.

If that many people like it, maybe it will be something the rest of us can live with – or at least not question the mental health of those who voted for it.

The city, according to a recent Statesman story, “is looking for a piece that is modern and looks toward the future but also is welcoming, exciting and comfortable for people who come to City Hall.”

Fine. But would it be too much to hope for something really basic – that it be pleasing to the eye?

Each time the subject of beautifying Boise is in the news, I think of a remark by a local architect, who told me years ago that when it came to aesthetic considerations it was common to cut corners or settle for second-rate – or worse – because “it’s only Boise.” If it was New York or Chicago or Seattle, he said, architects, developers and even artists would do things  differently.

Boise has grown up a good deal since then. It’s bigger, more vibrant, more interesting. Our art should reflect that.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in the Statesman’s Life section and is posted on http://www.woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.