Boise may be a fairly young city, even by American standards (the site of the present city was still pretty much pasture well into the 1860s), but that doesn't mean it is without architectural charm. A number of the city's neighborhoods are notable for their wonderful buildings, new and old.

Architecture buffs will appreciate downtown Boise’s Old Boise Historic District, which features a number of charming city blocks preserved from territory times and brought into the new millennium with repairs and renovations.

The downtown neighborhood is also home to many of Boise’s finer examples of contemporary architecture, including the Veltex building on Main St., notable for its revolutionary use of structural materials to resist gravity and lateral loads, and the New Water Center on Broadway, which appropriately incorporates a rain collection system into its design. Also worth checking out is the Egyptian Theatre on Main St., constructed in 1927 in the Egyptian Revival style shortly after the watershed discovery of King Tut’s tomb.

The city’s Warm Springs and North End neighborhoods are the places to go to see Boise’s most historic and extravagant private homes. Warm Springs in particular, with its tree-lined avenues and turn-of-the-century Victorians (erected by Boise’s elite, many of whom struck it rich in the booming mining industry), provides a prime opportunity for a glimpse into stately old Boise.