Ada Odd Fellows Temple

The Ada lodge of the IOOF is architecturally significant as an early stone commercial building, its strong texture still extant or (at shopfront level) retrievable, on a downtown Boise streetscape now nearly devoid of such texture and the sense of time and place it evokes. The awareness that it was once half of a double building with forwarding light well, a type common enough in many cities but unusual in Boise, adds to its architectural historical interest. At the same time, the remaining portion has independent integrity of form. The building has additional architectural and socio-historical significance as a good large-scale example of a lodge hall, a cherished institution in early-twentieth-century America. Such buildings, which typically housed shop space for rental purposes downstairs and a lodge hall above, might be as simple as the slightly later South Boise IOOF hall, with its single store downstairs and single open lodge room upstairs; or as substantial as this one, with its double business block and lodge and banquet room and foyer. Or they might even be as elaborate as the firm's 1913 Elks Lodge in Boise (National Register, February 17, 1978), which had three floors of accommodations for members (a roof garden was planned as well) over a quarter-block of commercial space downstairs.

The business block which was to provide both income and a lodge hall for Lodge 77 was first reported designed in 1903, and a foundation was put down at that time. But problems relating to financing delayed construction for four years. The structure that was finally gotten underway in the spring of 1907 was essentially the original plan twice simplified. It had gone from a four-story, faintly Moorish concoction, with a dome over the set back connecting wings, to a severe geometrically ornamented four-story building, and finally to the tall two-story structure which took its place on the street next to, and kept its facade line continuous with, the three-story (now sleekly remodeled) Sonna building. The reported costs ranged from $70,000 to a projected $125,000.