Boise's Columbian Club marks its 120th year

Patronize a library, sit on a park bench, or tour a local historical site, and chances are good that Boise’s Columbian Club had something to do with it.

The club was founded in 1893, at the time of the Chicago World’s Fair, the Columbian Exposition. A group of Idaho women served there as hostesses at the Idaho exhibit — a log cabin.

The fair, also known as the “White City” because of its idealized, visionary architecture, promoted a hopeful view of the future even as it paid homage to the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the New World.

The women from Idaho carried that sentiment back to Boise when the fair ended. The city itself had been incorporated for just 30 years when the women formed the Columbian Club. Their first mission: create a one-room library in City Hall.

That success spurred more. Columbian Club women founded the Idaho State Historical Department. They helped found the Boise Senior Center. Even the hallowed Boise State Broncos can trace their lineage to the club, which helped establish Boise Junior College, BSU’s predecessor.

Now, as the club is facing the reality of an aging membership that’s a fraction of the size it was during its heyday, it’s celebrating its 120th anniversary on Valentine’s Day with a tea at the Boise Depot — and looking for new members.

“We hang in there,” said club President Donna Wisdom. The 30-member club is the oldest service organization still active in the city, said Wisdom.

Boise Mayor Dave Bieter honored the club, along with the Assistance League of Boise, Rotary and Kiwanis and others, at a reception last spring.

Wisdom said the club’s main activity now is helping other local nonprofits.

The club donates around $3,500 each year in cash, said Wisdom, but gives far more in volunteer hours. Among the causes: the Women’s and Children’s Alliance and children’s programs at the Idaho State Historical Museum. The club provided two $1,000 scholarships to women studying to become teachers at Boise State.

Coming full circle to its first project, the club recently donated to a library program at the prison and to scholarships for inmates working toward a GED.

Wisdom said the Valentine’s Day event will celebrate the existing club “but also all the things women did before us to get Boise growing into the city it is.”

She admits to some uncertainty about the club’s future in an era when most women have professions outside their homes that cut into their time for community service. She often meets people in the community who don’t realize the Columbian Club is still around, or they associate it with their mothers or grandmothers and a more genteel era.

“But I feel that as long as we can keep people interested in projects, and keep them feeling like they’re contributing, we’ll continue to bring members in,” Wisdom said.

Interest in service clubs has declined, said Lynn Hoffmann, director of the Idaho Nonprofit Center. The book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of the American Community” by Robert Putnam, she noted, attributes some of the dropping interest in civic service groups to the rise of professionally managed nonprofits with paid staffs.

But she agrees with Wisdom that there’s some reason to be optimistic about the future of service clubs.

“People are rediscovering the value to the community, as well as their own lives, in coming together around specific needs,” Hoffmann said.

The community service landscape is more varied than it was 120 years ago, she said; women-centric groups like the Junior League and the Assistance League emphasize their own goals — creating civic leaders and supporting children living in poverty, respectively.

Service groups will continue to evolve, she added.

“They may not look like what we’ve seen,” Hoffmann said. “But there will be a whole new generation of people,” Hoffmann said.

Groups like the Columbian Club will stand as time-tested inspirations.

Anna Webb: 377-6431