This Boise building from the 1960s just made the National Register. The ’60s!
The James A. McClure Federal Building, built in the New Formalism style of the 1960s, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s a high-style, international-style modernist building,” said Dan Everhart, a historian with the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office. “There are few like it in terms of sort of the caliber of design and construction that that building exhibits.”
The seven-story building, finished in 1968, houses the federal courts in Boise. It’s located at 550 W. Fort St. and has nearly 174,000 square feet.
It was designed by third-generation Boise architect Charles Hummel, who partnered with Charles Luckman, who designed Madison Square Garden in New York City and the space-age Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport (which is often mistaken for the air-traffic control tower).
“It was part of a larger effort by the federal government in the 1960s, instigated by the Kennedy administration and Mrs. Kennedy’s efforts to see a higher caliber of federal building construction across the country,” Everhart said. “Boise’s building is part of that effort.”
The upper portion of the building is made up of repeating lightweight concrete window modules with gray tinted glass. The lower pedestal levels are enclosed by system of a glass curtain walls.
The flat roof is clad in a membrane system with rock ballast. A metal-clad penthouse contains a window-washing machine on rails.
“Hummel intended that for all its modern style, the building would relate to its surroundings,” former Statesman reporter Anna Webb wrote in her 2013 series on 150 Boise icons. “He designed the first floor of the building to be raised. Massive windows allow a 360-degree view of the surrounding neighborhood, including the historic Fort Boise complex.”
Hummel, who died in 2016 at age 91, designed Bishop Kelly High School and the Boise State University library and student union. He shared in the design of the Boise Centre on the Grove.
The building was named in 2001 for James McClure, a Payette native who served in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 1991. McClure, who died in 2011, previously served three terms in the U.S. House.
Everhart admires the building.
“Floating as it does, the upper floors above this raised and recessed lower floor, it’s all very much of its time, and I think still holds up fairly well,” he said.
It’s one of nine federal buildings built in the 1960s and early ‘70s that followed the New Formalism style. Others include the Clifford Davis-Odell Horton Federal Building in Memphis, the J.J. Pickle Federal Building in Austin, Texas, the Dick Cheney Federal Building in Casper, Wyoming, the Joseph C. O’Mahoney Federal Center in Cheyenne and the Wallace Bennett Federal Building in Salt Lake City.
Hummel considered the McClure building one of the top designs of his career. Everhart said Hummel was a little miffed that his firm didn’t get to design the building by itself, but he was very pleased with the finished building.
“It was one of the five buildings he wanted to focus on when we discussed the high points of his career a few years ago,” Everhart said. “He was particularly proud of this building.”
Listing on the register helps protect the character of the building. Any changes must be reviewed by the U.S. General Services Administration and the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office.
Historic preservationists look at buildings that are at least 50 years old when considering them for historic status, Everhart said.
“People always find that 50-year guideline as a bit of a shocker,” he said. “In just a couple of months that calendar date will flip. and we’ll be thinking about properties built in 1970.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
