The National Historic Register group nomination of Tourtelotte and Hummel buildings describes this building as architecturally significant because it is the first cast-concrete commercial structure in the Group. “The Tourtellotte building represents the classicizing impulse of the 1920s in interaction with new structural systems and the functionalist aesthetic which accompanied them. … The architectural significance of the building is the more clear in a comparison of it with the J. O. Jordan building, [270 N. 9th, Boise] a block away on Bannock and ten years younger. It is a virtually identical building structurally, and almost certainly built from only slightly modified plans. The Jordan building has an art deco sheath: stylized fiddle-head ornament capping the pilasters, [and] angular crests at the roofline. The pre-cast concrete panels of the Tourtellotte building, by contrast, are relieved by simple classicizing pilaster capitals and a frieze above conservative, multiple-segmented mezzanine lights. The effect is one of restraint and conservatism, therefore, despite the obviously modern materials which only a decade later would produce a more progressive and machined effect.”

John Tourtellotte had the building built in 1927 as an investment property. At the time, Tourtellotte was running the Tourtellotte and Hummel (predecessor of Hummel Architects) Portland office so the building was designed there with construction supervision from the Boise office. This arrangement was followed for the C.C. Anderson store, the Empire building remodel and addition of the same year, and the 1929 Hotel Boise (Hoff Building).

(Source: National Historic Register Group Nomination of Tourtellotte and Hummel Architecture Thematic Resource, Idaho State Historical Society, 11/4/82)