Paris, Idaho - Architectural Treasure

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 or two. The Paris Museum has information about this and other homes. 

13. SITE NAME :  Hotel Paris        SITE       76

7 Main Street, Paris, Idaho

The Hotel Paris building, on the southeast corner of Main and Center, is an approximately square structure on a daylight basement.    Fabric is red brick on the street sides (buff brick, with segmentally-arched openings, on the south side and rear elevations). Trim is concrete, wood and metal.The only alterations to the building are superficial: a wooden skirt forming a box eave around the Main Street porch roof, a metal awning at right front, window re-glazing.  The building appears sound and is still in use as apartments.

An outset porch is centered on each street side; the porches have flat roofs, supported on short, block battered wood piers on tall concrete-capped brick bases.    The entrance on Main is evidently the primary one, with front as well as side walls, and an extra set of brick pillars flanking the concrete steps. On the basement and first stories, up to a continuous concrete sill running under the windows, the brick is rough-textured.  From the sill to the crested and parapet roofline, it is smooth.  Windows are of various types--fixed, casement, sash; hence some re-glazing has apparently occurred. The concrete sills and transom lights of the downstairs windows are undisturbed, along with the truncated pilasters, capped with small "hip-roofed" wood and metal ornaments, which separate them.  The main decorative elements on the upper story are simple geometric patterns formed by header and inset courses of the brick, and the broad, flat, Prairie style metal cornice suspended midway between the window heads and the roofline.

Hotel Paris is architecturally significant as one of Paris' more pretentious buildings, and as the first non-religious structure to occupy the Tabernacle block. This long-awaited project was brought about through the same backing and designers as the Browning Block.   In fact, this building and the business block were being built simultaneously in 1917.  Shreeve and Madsen of Ogden were the architects and the contractor was Louis Sorenson of Rigby who brought in not only his own workers but materials as well. Construction began in 1916 after the lot had been purchased from the church.

In its finished form, the hotel had twenty-two rooms and was "elegantly furnished throughout.  With its bungalow and Prairie appearance, the hotel would have been, even more than the Browning Block, a truly "modern” addition to Main Street.

Some of its horizontal character is found in the Public School further north on Main Street, but the hotel design has no colleague in Paris. (14 Paris Post, 8 March 1918)