Meridian’s Idaho Building once paired shopping, apartments and a public bath

Image: Archival photograph of the Idaho Building in Meridian dated September 17, 2018; the businesses, signs and streetscape shown are historical rather than a current tenant directory.

A downtown building can hold a more varied history than its storefront suggests. Meridian’s Idaho Building, at 136 East Idaho Avenue, was built in 1913 for Harrell & Pfaffle Co., with commercial space below and apartments above, according to the city’s historic walking-tour account.

The second floor also included a public bathing room. The city describes out-of-town visitors renting a place to wash before a Saturday-night dance, a detail that places ordinary routines inside the larger story of a growing town. Early retailers and later uses changed as the building continued to serve downtown.

Read the archived account before looking at the exterior from the public sidewalk. Compare the upper windows and facade with the ground-floor spaces, while remembering that visible details may have changed over time. An archived reference to a business should not be treated as evidence that it operates there today.

The building makes a good prompt for a broader question: which services once needed a shared place that a modern household might now take for granted? Use the city’s history resources to explore further, and respect current occupants. A historical stop does not create public access to private rooms or businesses.

Sources and visit details

• City of Meridian: Idaho Building historic walking-tour account

Photo: Tamanoeconomico / Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and converted to WebP; the site wordmark may be added in display.