The original design featured eight rooms, including four bedrooms, and a "broad porch" that was divided and enclosed sometime after construction. Tourtellotte & Co. intended an exterior of brick veneer with stone trimmings,[4] but the NRHP nomination form described an exterior of clapboard siding below square shingles.[2]
Charles Cavanah served as Boise City Attorney, and in 1906 he was elected to represent Ada County in the Idaho State Legislature. Later he was appointed a federal district judge. In 1925 Charles F. Hummel designed a more stately house for Cavanah, the Charles C. Cavanah house (1925), also known as the Angell house, now part of the Warm Springs Avenue Historic District.[5]