Working from Home

Working from Home. . Because the chief assayer position was a political appointment, new presidents typically replaced them. Eleven different men occupied this office over sixty years. The rest of the small staff of clerks, lab workers, and guards could work here indefinitely. One notable employee, Robert Mobley, worked at the Assay Office for more than fifty years. , The building’s interior floors separated public and private use. The first floor contained offices, laboratories, and workrooms. Smelting furnaces, storage rooms, and living space for guards were in the basement. The entire second floor was a heated seven-room apartment for the chief assayer and his family., Free living quarters were often a perk for appointed federal employees. The building’s spacious apartment was a welcome luxury in early Boise, where alternate lodgings were scarce and often rough., Inset , Most chief assayers were not from Idaho. Imagine arriving in Boise in 1872 when it was a dusty boomtown., Timeline , From Time Immemorial - Indigenous People , 1869 - 1932 - US Treasury Department , 1932 - 1972 - US Forest Service , 1972 - present - Idaho State Historical Society