Paris, Idaho - Architectural Treasure

Photo by Lauriann Wakefield

In 1978, the Idaho Historical Society cataloged over 80 architecturally significant historic houses and commercial buildings in Paris, Idaho.  In this and future columns we will highlight one. 

Henry Stoker House and Outbuildings  (Site 46)
LOCATION: 192 South Second East, Paris, Idaho

The former Stoker house is composed of a mansard-roofed rectangular block facing East Second Street, and a gable-roofed ell, its hipped entry porch facing South Second East, to the rear.

The main block is one-and-a-half stories and constructed of brick. The facade is symmetrical, with a centered entry and flanking windows aligned beneath a row of round-headed wall dormers in the shoulder of the mansard roof. There is another window with a wall dormer above it in the narrow east end. The main floor windows have cast lintels and sills; the dormer windows are modestly trimmed with scroll-sawn mill work. There are two corbelled brick chimneys well inset from the ends.

The rear section is frame sided with shiplap. The porch is hipped toward the main block and supported on Tuscan columns. The disposition of openings is the reverse of that encountered in the Rich-Grandy cabin two blocks west (site 28) ; the entry is at left, with a pair of two-over- two light sash windows in the middle and a third window at right. property includes a one-story log outbuilding and a frame Paris-type barn.

The Stoker house is architecturally significant as an unaltered example of the one­ and-one-half story mansard-roofed I-house in Paris. It is the only brick mansard which has not been re-sided and shows its masonry and trim clearly.  The Tueller family masons, who chose mansard roofs for their own residences, were responsible for the brickwork. The two units of this L-shaped house are made more compatible in scale by the use of the mansard than on the taller I-houses, e.g., the Stucki house (site (132 ). According to oral sources, the frame portion was built first by the Stokers, a Swiss family who farmed. When fortunes rose or numbers grew, the I-section and probably the porch columns, comparable to those on the Wallentine house (site #35) were added. The brick portion, with etched glass in the door, appeared after the turn of the century, a date which is supported by the use of concrete lintels and sills rather than stone. The Stoker house established the mansard roof as an unusually enduring stylistic element in Paris. As such, it has been determined to be, as are Paris' earlier mansards, of statewide notice.

Wallace Elliot’s 1884 History of the Idaho Territory, an interesting, if not always accurate source of images of early houses, includes a drawing of Walter Hoge's residence as an L-shaped house with stilted Italianate bay and raised running porch with balustrade, and featuring a gable roof.  An 1883 reference in the Bear Lake Democrat states that Hoge was "making an addition to his brick house”   and was erecting a frame house on the same lot.

The porch base still shows on the present form of the house between the two thirties arches.  The "square cabin” portion to the rear is most probably that separate frame dwelling mentioned in the paper.  It is possible that its Y construction coincided with Hoge’ s response to a "call from authority”  to marry again, and that this house was joined to the main block at a later date. Due to Elliott's illustration, it seems clear that the mansard roof was also added after the house had its nearly final shape. With the addition of the more exotic roof line, which not only created a stylistic change but gave the house an added half-story, the Hoge house came to resemble the Tueller mansards built around 1887.  Its wedge-roofed upper door in the elaborate bracketing is a detail not found on any of the others.

Walter Hoge came to Paris in the 1870's and, at various times, was county sheriff , editor of the Southern Idaho Independent, had a land office, ran a lumber mill in nearby Liberty, and was active in the Paris Cooperative Institution.(Bear Lake Democrat, 23 June 1883)