The Portia Club
Payette, Payette County
- Grants: 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2019 – structural stabilization to the basement
Location: 225 N 9th Street, Payette, ID 83661
The Portia Club is an historic women’s clubhouse founded in 1895 by a group of prominent local women to discuss literature and “improve the cultural wellbeing of their community.” Over the next fifty years the club started the Payette City Library, funded Children’s Fee Health Clinics, organized the Payette Apple Blossom Festival, and sponsored lectures on laws that affected women and children. In 1919, with $60 in proceeds from a dance the ladies sponsored, they voted to build their own clubhouse. It took eight years to raise the funds and in 1927, with $4366, they hired architect Ike Whiteley to design the Spanish style stucco building with red roof tiles and parapets. Friends of the Portia Club are now restoring the building.
