Boise Junior High School
A 1937 WPA Art Deco school in locally quarried brick and sandstone, designed by Tourtellotte & Hummel to be Boise’s first junior high and still educating students more than eight decades later.
At a glance
Boise Junior High School at 1105 North 13th Street is a 1937 Art Deco brick building designed by Frank K. Hummel of Tourtellotte & Hummel—the same firm that had given Boise the Hotel Boise tower seven years earlier. Funded by a Works Progress Administration grant, it was constructed by contractor J.O. Jordan & Son using locally sourced brick and sandstone, with the cornerstone set on 21 May 1936 and the building dedicated on 24 May 1937. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and serving as a contributing property to the Fort Street Historic District, the school was renamed North Junior High School after a second junior high opened in 1948 and remains in active use as an educational institution.
Key facts
- Cornerstone set: May 21, 1936; dedicated May 24, 1937
- Architect: Frank K. Hummel, Tourtellotte & Hummel
- Contractor: J.O. Jordan & Son
- Style: Art Deco
- Materials: Locally sourced brick and sandstone
- Address: 1105 North 13th Street, Boise, ID 83702
- NRHP: ref. 82000186, added 17 November 1982
- District: Contributing property, Fort Street Historic District
- Current use: North Junior High School (active)
History
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Boise consolidated its previously independent neighborhood schools and reorganized the district from an eight-grade primary and four-grade secondary model into the three-tier elementary–junior high–senior high system that American education had adopted from research suggesting it better served adolescent development. The reorganization created an institutional gap: Boise needed a junior high building, and the Depression had eliminated private capital for public construction. The Works Progress Administration provided the answer, funding a new junior high school as part of its program of public works employment.
The commission went to Tourtellotte & Hummel, who had already defined Boise’s architectural character across several decades with buildings including the Hotel Boise and the Idaho State Capitol. Frank K. Hummel designed a brick Art Deco school that reflected the WPA’s emphasis on quality construction and regional materials: the brick and sandstone are locally sourced, giving the building a visual connection to the Idaho landscape that a more generic institutional design would have lacked. Contractor J.O. Jordan & Son set the cornerstone in May 1936 and completed the building for dedication in May 1937.
When a second junior high, South Junior High School, opened in 1948, the original building was renamed North Junior High School. A band room followed in 1949 and a cafeteria in 1968, modest additions that expanded the building’s capacity while leaving the Art Deco facade intact. The National Register of Historic Places listed the building in 1982 and recognized its contribution to the Fort Street Historic District, a designation that has supported the preservation of the original structure through subsequent decades of school district evolution.
What you see
The school presents a composed Art Deco facade to 13th Street, its brick surface organized with the geometric precision that Tourtellotte & Hummel brought to both their commercial and institutional commissions. The use of local brick and sandstone gives the building a warmth and material specificity that distinguishes it from the more neutral institutional buildings of the same period: this is a Boise building in its bones, not a generic school design adapted to a western site. The sandstone detailing at the entrance zone provides the ornamental program that Art Deco required, keeping the decorative investment at the threshold where it would be most visible to the students and parents entering each day.
The building represents Tourtellotte & Hummel’s domestic-scale Art Deco register: not the vertical drama of the Hotel Boise but the civic confidence of an institution built to last. The firm applied the same design intelligence to both scales, and seeing the two buildings within a ten-minute walk of each other—the eleven-story tower on Bannock Street and the two-story school on 13th Street—is the best way to understand the range of the Art Deco idiom as it was practiced in Boise during the Depression decade.
Practical information
- Status: Active public school; interior not accessible to general public
- Exterior: Viewable from 13th Street
- Photography: Exterior from public sidewalk freely permitted
- Best time to visit: Weekdays during school hours for exterior; combined walk with the Hotel Boise (eight blocks south) makes a 30-minute architectural itinerary
- Time needed: 15 minutes for exterior
Getting there
North Junior High School is at 1105 North 13th Street, eight blocks north of the Hotel Boise on Bannock Street. From downtown, take 13th Street north from Bannock; the school is on the right at the corner of 13th and Fort Street. Valley Regional Transit local routes serve the 13th Street corridor. The school is a 10-minute walk from the Hotel Boise and a 15-minute walk from the Idaho State Capitol.
Nearby
- Hotel Boise / Hoff Building (1930) — Frank K. Hummel’s eleven-story Art Deco tower, eight blocks south on Bannock Street
- Boise Depot (1925) — Spanish Mission Revival former Union Pacific station, now a community venue, ten minutes’ drive south
- Fort Street Historic District — the school contributes to this district of early-twentieth-century residential and institutional buildings
- Idaho Botanical Garden — in the former Idaho State Penitentiary grounds, one mile northeast
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Boise Junior High School” — primary narrative source
- National Register of Historic Places, ref. 82000186 (17 November 1982)
- National Register of Historic Places, Fort Street Historic District nomination
- Wikimedia Commons, Boise_Junior_High_School_(Boise,_Idaho).jpg (Tamanoeconomico, CC BY-SA 4.0)
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