Boise Junior High School
1105 N. 13th St., Boise, IDBoise Junior High School (now North Junior High) is of exceptional architectural significance as the finest of the numerous school buildings designed by the firm under the WPA federal financing program of the 1930s. It is one of the few finished in brick and in a clearly articulated art deco style (another is the Boise High School Gym, which is included in the Boise High Campus group, site 49).
Substantial school buildings were designed between 1935 and 1941 for Cascade, Melba, Jerome, Gooding, Marsing, Parma, Adrian, Homedale, New Plymouth, Salmon, Bruneau, and Caldwell, in addition to remodelings and additions and a number of gymnasiums. A number of these schools have considerable merit, but due to a large number of these resources, it was decided to include only the most notably distinguished of them in the Thematic Group in advance of age eligibility.
The fact that Boise Junior High is located in the capital city, and in one of the wealthier school districts of southwest Idaho, probably accounts for the more ex- pensive materials and elaborated detail; many of these schools are of radically simplified reinforced concrete construction and surface. It is interesting that the more elaborate the material possibilities, the more deco the flavor; some of the simpler schools seem to tend toward the modern style, but this is perhaps by default. Though designs in; the streamlined modern manner do appear in the late work of the firm, they are generally in commercial commissions (see site 136). The more traditional underpinnings of the art deco style may have seemed more appropriate to educational buildings. Boise Junior High is clearly within the deco aesthetic. J. 0. Jordan and Son were the contractors; the projected price of the building permit was $228,258.
Bibliography
Boise, Idaho. Hummel Jones Miller Hunsucker P.A. List of Volume of Work by Year, 1937. Drawings signed by Tourtellotte and Hummel.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.