Boise Capitol Area District Boise, Ada County, Idaho, USA

National Register Statement of Significance

The following text is courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

Boise was designated permanent territorial capital of Idaho in December 1864, a year and a half after the community was founded. Capitol Square soon became an important feature of the townsite, although the territorial capital was not actually completed until 1886. As the center of Idaho's governmental complex, the varied buildings represented in this district have an importance and character of great interest. They are pleasingly bound together by some of the city's finest park areas, with large old trees in great variety. Two of these, on the Capitol grounds, were planted by visiting Presidents of the United States: Benjamin Harrison and Theodore Roosevelt. The greatest value to Idaho of recognizing the Boise Capitol Area District as an architecturally significant complex lies in calling attention to the worth of Moderne structures as well as more traditional Classical revival ones. The district includes the State Capitol; the Federal Building; an important adjoining hotel which served as a major political center during the depression and for many years after that; a park and monument dedicated to Frank Steunenberg, a former governor whose assassination in 1905 led to the internationally famous conspiracy trial of William D. Haywood in 1907; and the Ada County Courthouse, located on the site of the trial. The Haywood Trial, along with some earlier significant labor cases, took place in Ada County's previous courthouse—an earlier structure in which officials of the Coeur d'Alene miners unions decided to organize the Western Federation of Miners (a minitant industrial union which provided the primary sponsorship for the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905) in 1893. The present Ada County Courthouse houses a representative collection of Works Prefects Administration murals characteristic of the time it was constructed. While not a politically oriented structure, Saint Michael's Cathedral, immediately adjacent to the capitol, forms an important architectural component of this historic district.