Hotel Boise
Boise’s first skyscraper, a 1930 Art Deco tower by Tourtellotte & Hummel that opened as a founding member of Western Hotels and still defines the Idaho capital’s skyline.
At a glance
The Hotel Boise at 802 West Bannock Street is an eleven-story Art Deco building of 1930 designed by Frank K. Hummel of the firm Tourtellotte & Hummel—the same practice that gave Boise the North Junior High School and Peery’s Egyptian Theatre in nearby Ogden, Utah. At 165 feet, the hotel was considered Boise’s first skyscraper and remains one of the city’s architectural landmarks. Its original 400 guest rooms made it the dominant accommodation address in the Idaho capital, and it opened on 27 August 1930 as a founding member of Western Hotels, the Pacific Northwest chain. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976—an unusually early recognition for a twentieth-century commercial building—it now functions as an office building under the name Hoff Building, part of the Boise Capitol Area District.
Key facts
- Opened: 27 August 1930
- Architect: Frank K. Hummel, Tourtellotte & Hummel
- Style: Art Deco
- Height: 165 feet (11 floors + 2 added 1976; now 13 floors)
- Original rooms: 400 hotel rooms
- Address: 802 West Bannock Street, Boise, ID 83702
- NRHP: ref. 76000663, added 12 May 1976
- District: Boise Capitol Area District
History
Frank K. Hummel completed the Hotel Boise in 1930 at a moment when Boise was asserting its identity as a capital city with regional ambitions. The Art Deco tower, rising eleven stories over Bannock Street, announced that the Idaho capital could match the architectural ambitions of larger western cities. The hotel opened as a founding member of Western Hotels on 27 August 1930, connecting it to the emerging network of Pacific Northwest hospitality that would eventually become part of the Westin Hotels chain.
For nearly four decades, Hotel Boise functioned as the city’s premier address, hosting the full range of civic life that a capital city hotel accumulates: political gatherings, visiting dignitaries, commercial deals, and the everyday transactions of a mid-sized city on the rise. The building departed the Western Hotels chain in 1966, and operational challenges led to its sale in 1976 to Hoff Companies, who renovated it for office use, added two floors to reach its current thirteen-story height, and in the process removed Art Deco decorative details. The architectural features were restored when EBCO Inc. purchased the building in 1978 and reinstalled the details that had been stripped, a reversal that speaks to the growing recognition of the building’s significance that the NRHP listing in 1976 had formalized.
The building now carries the Hoff Building name and functions as a Boise office property, its Art Deco shell intact at street level where the restored details serve as a visible reminder of the city’s 1930 confidence in its own future.
What you see
The Hotel Boise presents an eleven-story Art Deco tower to the Bannock Street streetscape, its massing organized with the vertical emphasis and stepped profile that characterize the style. Tourtellotte & Hummel were experienced Art Deco practitioners in Boise—the same firm designed the North Junior High School seven years later in a smaller-scale institutional register—and the hotel shows their command of commercial high-rise composition. The building is among the oldest Art Deco skyscrapers in the intermountain West and was recognized by the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, when relatively few twentieth-century buildings had yet achieved that status.
The original ground-floor commercial spaces housed the mix of amenities that a quality 1930 hotel required: gift shops, beauty and barber services, automobile association offices, and a cab company dispatch. These have been replaced by contemporary office tenants, but the street-level reading of an activated commercial base beneath a tower shaft remains. The Art Deco ornamental details that were removed in 1976 and reinstalled in 1978 include elements that give the building its character at close range—the specifics of the decorative program that Hummel designed to signal quality and modernity to a Boise that was ready for both.
Practical information
- Current use: Hoff Building office complex; lobby accessible during business hours
- Exterior: Best viewed from the intersection of Bannock and 8th Streets
- Photography: Exterior from public sidewalk freely permitted
- Time needed: 15–20 minutes for exterior and the surrounding Boise Capitol Area District
- Combine with: The Boise Capitol and surrounding historic district; also the North Junior High School (same architect firm) eight blocks north
Getting there
The Hoff Building stands at 802 West Bannock Street in downtown Boise, four blocks west of the Idaho State Capitol. Boise Airport (BOI) is five miles south via Cole Road; Ground transportation and Uber/Lyft serve the downtown within 15 minutes. Valley Regional Transit bus routes serve the downtown grid. The building is within the walkable downtown core, near the Basque Block cultural district and the Boise Depot.
Nearby
- Idaho State Capitol (1920) — the Neoclassical capitol designed by John E. Tourtellotte and Charles F. Hummel (same firm), four blocks east on Jefferson Street
- North Junior High School (1937) — another Tourtellotte & Hummel Art Deco building, eight blocks north on 13th Street
- Basque Block — the nation’s most concentrated Basque cultural district, two blocks south on Grove Street
- Egyptian Theatre (1927) — Egyptian Revival movie palace on Capitol Boulevard, five blocks northeast
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Hoff Building” — primary narrative source
- National Register of Historic Places, ref. 76000663 (12 May 1976)
- National Register of Historic Places, Boise Capitol Area District nomination
- Wikimedia Commons, Hotel_Boise_(3).jpg (Tamanoeconomico, CC BY-SA 4.0)
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