Changes coming near Idaho Old Pen & Botanical Gardens with a historical expansion. Why?
There’s an almost unbridled excitement as David Matte, Sarah Phillips, Janet Gallimore and Mark Breske, employees of the Idaho State Historical Society, walk between towering shelves of boxes at the Idaho History Center.
Every white case lit by Vault A’s overhead fluorescent lights holds, on average, about 1,000 brown and white cardboard file boxes, each with neat handwritten labels noting what pieces of Idaho history are inside.
The contents span and surpass the 135 years since statehood: tattered notes left by Idaho’s early power brokers, legislative documents, political campaign fliers, church papers.
Matte, the State Archives administrator, has spent his career buried in these aging paper documents. Phillips, the State Museum administrator, focuses on physical objects and artifacts. The two are key figures to unlocking Idaho’s past, along with Gallimore, the society’s executive director, and Breske, its spokesperson.
But the group’s excitement — which bubbles out of them like schoolchildren on a field trip — is focused on the future. Soon, the 62,000-square-foot Idaho History Center at 2205 Old Penitentiary Road will be a storm of busyness as they make way for a 50,000-square-foot expansion. That’s about the size of an average grocery store.
The two-story, $21 million expansion in Boise’s East End near the Idaho Botanical Gardens and Old Penitentiary would combine all the agency’s collections now spread across several off-site buildings, which include 50,000 museum items, over 93,000 archaeological artifacts, 500,000 photographs and 130,000 boxes of documents.
“It’s not just a box of things, it’s not just a museum, it’s not just a historic site,” Breske said, “but it really is Idaho’s legacy.”
The 59-person state agency includes the State Museum, State Archives, State Historic Preservation Office and Old Idaho Penitentiary. It also manages programs under the National Historic Preservation Act, including the National Register of Historic Places.
More than half of the agency’s budget comes from fees, public and private grants, memberships, and corporate and philanthropic gifts, according to the Historical Society. The rest of the budget comes from state funding. According to Gallimore, the state approved $15 million toward the expansion in fiscal year 2024 and $6 million in compact mobile shelving in fiscal 2025, which ends June 30.
The agency is working with the Botanical Gardens to ensure that the Historical Center’s expansion won’t impede on the gardens’ own improvements, Phillips said. The agency is still in the planning stage for the expansion, though staff are hoping to kick off construction soon.
“All of us are waiting for updates, and we’re excited to have it come to fruition,” she said.
Problems nag the Idaho Historical Society
The expansion would address several problems the society has faced, including maintaining a leased building and two other off-site locations that aren’t up to standards.
Gallimore said the society has long known that the buildings, one of which has significant deferred maintenance and the other of which has no fire suppression system, were challenging for preserving historic materials.
The historical society relies on people’s trust that materials are safe to help build the story of Idaho, Gallimore said.
“A big part of what we do every day is to try to make sure that people know that we have a great team, great system, great opportunities for materials to be here in perpetuity,” she said.
According to Phillips, “We get to be the ones that take care of Idaho’s family treasures … People have given for over 140 years to us, and have trusted us to take care of things that they find a lot of value in.”
Matte said staff also spend significant time driving between locations to access archival, archaeological and museum collections. The consolidation, he said, would help make them more efficient and allow the different arms of the society, such as the museum and archives, to work together better.
The constant back-and-forth is also a problem for the collections themselves, Phillips said. The more something moves or is handled, the quicker it deteriorates. Having a single building would protect artifacts.
“Anytime historic artifacts move, there’s kind of that inherent risk built into it,” she said. “That is a factor that we are always thinking about.”
A shared mission, shared space in Boise
The public, Matte said, can easily access a swath of records for historical, academic or family research at the history center. The staff often sees an influx of visitors during the legislative session and Boise State University’s academic year.
The agency serves over 110,000 people per year, including through educational programs, exhibitions, events and research access, according to the society. Over 15,000 school-aged children visit or use the organization’s programs each year.
For the staff historians, there’s a shared and almost sacred mission to preserve Idaho’s story.
“People love this state, they love its history, they love the part of the state they live in, they love their communities,” Gallimore said. “(History) grounds them in their home and in our family and in this place we call home.”
