The William Sidenfaden House is a Bungalow designed by Tourtellotte & Hummel and constructed in 1912. The house is part of Boise’s Fort Street Historic District, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places November 17, 1982. The House is a very large double-level brick- and stucco-veneer bungaloid house with a lateral ridgebeam and side-facing gables.
A cross-facade front porch has a shed roof showing the same notched, exposed rafters as the lateral eave of the main roof above it. The surface fabric of the frame structure is red brick on the first story and stucco with strips suggesting half-timbering on the second story. The downstairs windows have rough-cut, broadly denticulated stone sills. The low brick walls of the porch are relieved with narrow vertical strips of recessed brick and finished with a smooth stone coping. The wooden porch posts are square and massive and capped with dropped geometric ornament. Additional carpentry details are the close rows of projecting joist ends crossing the gable at attic floor level; and the unique set of artistry of the attic vents, and the suggested half timber ingredients of a Tudor styling.
William Sidenfaden moved to Boise in 1906 and began a partnership with undertaker Adolph Schreiber. Schreiber, formerly of the mortuary firm Schreiber & Brennan, was reelected coroner of Ada County, Idaho, in that year and continued as Sidenfaden’s partner in the new firm, Schreiber & Sidenfaden, Funeral Directors and Licensed Embalmers. In 1912, Sidenfaden bought the land from the Columbian Club for $3000 and he built the house for $4822 as shown in the City building permits. This was a very busy and loud time on this block as Boise High’s west wing was under construction.
He and his wife Minnie lived at the property into the 1920s. They owned four different parcels of land including his business property on Bannock, which Minnie assumed when William died in 1929. A Mrs. William Davis lived at the residence in the 1920s, and was active in the local WCTU Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the First Methodist Women’s club. It’s possible that the Sidenfaden’s either had her as a renter or they lived elsewhere and Mrs. Davis rented the house. There is an ad for room to rent for a gentleman in 1928.
In 1934, Minnie conveys the property to James and Marjorie L Baxter. Baxter was president of the Baxter Foundry and Machine Works and also the Boise Iron and Reduction Company. He is listed as an investor in the Free Gold Mining Co as well. He was also a WWI vet and a Republican Party activist as well as a member of the Boise Elks Lodge, Boy Scouts, Chamber of Commerce, and Episcopelian, American Legion, and the Sons and Daughters of Idaho Pioneers. Mrs. Baxter served as the vice president of the Central School PTA in 1935 and maintained a social club meeting at their residence. She was a member of the PEO, the Columbian Women’s Club, and the American Legion Auxiliary. She had graduated from Boise HS in 1914.
After the house was taken over by the Baxters, no more ads appear to rent the house. The Baxters occupied it until the 1980’s. They did own 2 other houses on State Street and Resseguie which they also rented to folks and ads ran there in 1937.
Mrs. Baxter owns the house until 1982 when is was sold to Elizabeth Griffin. Baxter died in 1984 and the Statesman claimed that she lived at 906 for over 50 years. In 1998, probate deed was issued for Griffin’s son James Griffin who owns it now. It has been a rental property since then.
Information from the Idaho Statesman, and the Fort Street Historic District nomination.