Jim Prugh, the Lakewood, Colo., investor who brings
new life to old buildings in downtown Lindsborg, has begun
another renovation – this one at 118 South Main. Prugh pur-
chased the building recently from Mark Esping, of Kansas
City, Mo., a former Lindsborg resident with long ties to the
community.
The renovation promises yet another of Prugh’s gems,
the craft, as he calls it, of “building a new house in an old
In a recent e-mail, Prugh noted work that’s been done so
“We removed the indoor/outdoor parrot cage at the rear of
the building. A few decades ago, a wall was built along the
east-west center line of the building to separate it into two
stores. The wall has been removed and the facade has been
returned with a single door. The floor has been repaired and
refinished. The facade’s old termite damage was removed.
The old (front) windows were replaced with huge double-
pane windows. A new bathroom was built at the rear of the
The place was once known as the P.J. Lindquist Building,
and is among ten sites in Kansas recently nominated for the
National Register of Historic Places by the Kansas Historic
Sites Board of Review.
Four of Prugh’s other Lindsborg properties are now on the
Kansas and National Registers, a designation that, after a
complicated process, allows much of the renovation expense
to be reimbursed in the form of federal and Kansas state tax
credits. The economics (savings) are eventually returned
to the owner in lower overall costs and to the community
through lower rental rates when the building is leased.
Having created commercial space on the ground floor at
118 S. Main, Prugh plans a one- or two-bedroom apartment
(13⁄4 baths) for the second floor. A personal elevator will be
installed for access at the rear of the building, in addition to
the staircase at the front, on Main Street. Refurbishing will
include the “green” energy-saving features of Prugh’s other
properties.
As with other Prugh projects, the construction and main-
tenance are the work of contractor Brian Freeman, whose
wife Vicki manages Prugh’s vacation rental properties. The
Freemans live in Lindsborg.
“Brian and Vicki are my right arm and my eyes and ears,”
Prugh said recently in a telephone interview. “I brainstorm
all the time with Brian, who can make miracles happen at a
construction site.”
Freeman said restoration of the ground floor commercial
space in the Lindquist building should be finished in two or
three weeks, and that the space is already committed to a
With that ground-floor work finished, Freeman then
returns to another Prugh property, at 113 North Main (The
Old Grind), to finish construction of a two-bedroom, two-
bath apartment above that business with rear access to the
apartment again by elevator. When that work is finished,
he said, he will return to the former Lindquist Building to
complete the apartment above that business.
When told that Prugh considered him and Vicki his right
hand and eyes and ears, Freeman grinned. “That’s great,” he
said, “because he’s right-handed.”
ACCORDING to the Kansas State Historical Society, the
Lindquist building was commissioned at 118 S. Main by
Swedish immigrant P.J. Lindquist in 1901 to house his tailor
shop and an upper-floor living space.
“That year, Lindsborg led other McPherson County towns
in investment in new commercial and residential building.
Although the tailor shop was short-lived, the Lindquist
family owned the building for 39 years,” the Society said
in a report about the building’s nomination for the National
“The family lived in the second-floor apartment for many
years, apparently after closing the tailor shop,” the Society
said. “Other businesses, such as the Tea Cup Inn, subse-
quently occupied the commercial space. The Malm Brothers
Painting Company reportedly packed and shipped stencils
from this building…”
“The building is an excellent example of an early 20th
century commercial building distinguished by Italianate-
style details including the cast-iron storefront and tall
second-story windows with ornate metal hoods. Although
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the building has housed multiple tenants on both floors over
the years, it retains a high degree of integrity.”
PRUGH’S interest in Lindsborg began several years ago
during a family trip from Denver to Oklahoma City. The
Prughs had stopped in Lindsborg.
“It was eight or ten years ago,” he said, “and I thought
Lindsborg was absolutely charming and had a lot going
for it – the look of the place, its attraction to famous visi-
tors like Mikhail Gorbachev, Karpov and the Chess School,
Garrison Keillor and Ken Burns, the good things happening
at Bethany, such a vigorous college. And now, all the activ-
ity, the town planning a future for 5,000 residents.”
Prugh, then a chemical engineer (natural gas processing
plants), said he was “looking to reinvent myself. I did have
some strong Swedish roots, with my mother’s mother an
Olson and my father’s grandfather a Nyquist. I thought, ‘I
could buy an old building, fix it up, see how that goes.’ Well,
one thing led to another and now I have five.”
Prugh’s first acquisition was about eight years ago, at 105
N. Main, originally the Berquist & Nelson Drugstore. When
Prugh bought it Main Street Toys had closed and after refur-
bishing it was reopened as a winery outlet store. It’s now
“Sarahndipity,” an attractive, eclectic variety store.
Other properties followed:
110-112 N. Main, location for Elizabeth’s and Reminiscent,
with a large apartment above both stores; 113 N. Main,
now The Old Grind; 122 N. Main, The Blacksmith Coffee
Roastery; and 124 N. Main, Ye Old Clocksmith, which Prugh
includes with the Blacksmith as one property.
Each of the buildings, built roughly at the turn of the last
century, is rich in local history and significant to the develop-
ment of Lindsborg as a thriving commercial and retail center,
its business district alive with eye-catching storefronts –
ornate second-story windows and hoods, stepped parapets,
central sliding doors, window grills, sculpted iron works,
intricate tiles, stencils and mosaics.
PRUGH has also created “vacation rental” properties,
small, well-appointed apartments for the “temporary” visi-
tor. His first, in 2011, began with the simple plan to build a
garage for renters of the apartment above 110-112 N. Main,
behind the apartment. Prugh thought, “After going through
all the trouble of building a garage, why not add an apart-
ment?” Thus, a garage at ground level, apartment on top – a
kind of carriage house in the tradition of another time, when
carriages were housed at ground level and stable hands or
liverymen lived above.
The carriage house would cozy up to large oak trees on the
north side of the lot, so Prugh named the place Trädhus, for
tree house, but one with a full kitchen and laundry. It’s an
all-electric place, a 550 sq-ft studio apartment with sleeping
area open to an outside deck above a carport, and all of it
earth-friendly.
A second vacation rental, Vetehuset, is above The Old
Grind and is a studio apartment in the same style and well-
turned furnishing as Trädhuset.
THE TAX credits have been crucial to Prugh’s plan, which
is for the investment to pay off for both the renter and the
landlord. But the creativity in his plan has been equally criti-
cal, the notion to refurbish history, to build high-end apart-
ments and vacation rentals in an area where there had been
none, and to re-make landmark buildings and open them to
shopkeepers at affordable rates, were risks that, in another
town perhaps would not have been possible.
This community holds a deep appreciation for its history,
for the arts that are so much a part of it, the beauty that is so
often its result. In turn, Prugh’s work has, as he says, “cre-
ated a positive reputation, perhaps my biggest accomplish-
ment. But it’s because the people appreciate fine things, and
they have been very receptive to my ideas.
“It’s worked out very well.”
NOTE: Other Lindsborg buildings on the state register of
historic places: City Hall, site of the former Farmers State
Bank; the U.S. Post Offi ce; The Smoky Valley Roller Mill,
the Johnson home, 226 W. Lincoln (home of Lee and Susie
Ruggles), the Teichgraeber-Runbeck House at 116 Mill, and
the Swedish Pavilion in Heritage Square.
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– JOHN MARSHALL
