(June 2019)
By Phil Roberts
It appears that the Cooper house at UWyo may be safe from demolition–at least for now.
The Cooper house, locally designed by Laramie’s most celebrated architect, Wilbur Hitchcock, illustrates four important industries in Wyoming history—cattle, transportation/shipping, oil, and tourism. The building is “Wyoming” through and through, despite its seemingly exotic design.
Other historic homes and museums can do that well, too. The Cooper performs an additional, different function. Setting it apart from “museum houses” is its focal point for teaching about historic preservation amidst an ever-changing university setting.
The house, as its own classroom, demonstrates to students and the Wyoming community at large that “preservation” can mean more than static reverence for a past world–“look but don’t touch.” Historic homes/buildings can be used—lived in, enjoyed, whether as a constantly evolving teaching environment, as a home for an academic department, or as an illustration of how one’s life can be made more meaningful by living with history.
The grounds—the increasingly more scarce open space—are an aesthetic reminder of one of Wyoming’s most cherished commonly held beliefs—that our open spaces provide renewal for the soul and pride of our place.
Together, the house, the grounds, the “carriage” house, the adaptive use–make the Cooper house special to our university, regardless of who may have stayed there or its unique architectural qualities.
A historic building, yes, but also a teaching opportunity to show an actual adaptive work in progress. May the Cooper continue to serve in that role for the next and all future generations of Cowboys who may take those lessons home–across Wyoming or around the world.
The following articles were written by Dr. Sherry Smith during the period when the Cooper Mansion was under threat the first time in the early 1980s. UW decided not to demolish the building. It was made the home of the American Studies Program a few years later. American Studies remains the occupant to this writing (3019).
The Politics of a Historic House
by Sherry Smith. Capitol Times (Cheyenne), Dec. 1982, pp. 10-11.
Next month [January 1983] the University of Wyoming will acquire the Cooper Mansion and a two-year dispute over that Laramie landmark may end. The controversy pits history preservationists who seek to maintain the building on the present site, against University of Wyoming officials who purchased the site for future academic buildings.
It also has involved controversy between university officials and the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) over placing the Cooper Mansion on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1980 members of the Wyoming Architectural Heritage Foundation (WAHF), a non-profit organization dedicated to saving significant Wyoming buildings and sites, nominated the Cooper Mansion to the National Register to gain national recognition of its architectural and historical significance.
The SHPO’s Consulting Committee approved the nomination, basing their decision on the mansion’s distinctive architectural style and the Cooper family’s significant role in the state’s cattle and oil industries and local philanthropy. But former UW President Edward Jennings and the Board of Trustees temporarily succeeded in blocking the nomination.
The property, on a full block between Grand and Ivinson Avenues, across the street from the Commerce and Industry Building, was originally purchased by the University of Wyoming Foundation, a development organization, for future UW academic buildings. Last January the Joint Appropriations Committee of the Wyoming legislature approved a UW request for funds to purchase the Cooper property from the Foundation. Transfer of title will occur in January 1983.
An immediate decision on the mansion’s future hinges upon a study being conducted by the Sheridan architectural firm of Malone and Baker on the future needs of the College of Commerce and Industry. If the firm concludes C&I should construct a new building, it will probably go on the Cooper property.
UW President Donald Veal said Malone and Baker may recommend building an addition to the current C&I structure or building a separate facility. If they recommend a separate facility, the university will either incorporate the mansion in the new building’s design or demolish or remove the Cooper Mansion.
President Veal and members of three university committees (capital, budget and academic planning) will make a recommendation to the Board of Trustees. The board will then make the final decision on the Cooper Mansion. The President’s recommendation will be based, according to Veal, on “what is an appropriate use for the university.”
“Appropriate use” includes maintaining a walking campus with new buildings as close to the core as possible, Veal said. The university’s main concern, the President said, is “how we can get the most appropriate space for the minimum public funds and meet our students’ needs. It gets back to what does it cost and how are we going to spend Wyoming money,” Veal said.
“Our first public concern is to our students,” Veal added, “and if I have to choose between facilities for students or for something else, obviously the students will come first. I don’t like to tear down buildings, but I don’t like to spend public money for private need, whether for preservation or a president’s house.”
Dr. Murray Carroll, chairman of the WAHF and director of the Laramie Plains Museum, believes the university has already slated the Cooper for demolition or removal.
“They know what they want to do. They have their master plan laid out and prolonging this thing helps allay the activities of those who object. Time is on their side.”
Carroll believes community sentiment is split between those who want to save the mansion and those who are indifferent. “I don’t think there is anyone, outside of the university, who want to see it torn down,” he said. “All people can do is let their legislators know how they feel. The University doesn’t care how the town feels,” Carroll said.
President Veal, however, insists no decision about the Cooper Mansion will be made until the university receives the Malone and Baker study. “I’m honestly not leaning in any direction,” he said.
Leo McCue, president of the UW Board of Trustees, also stated that the board is not leaning in any direction and that “investment costs will have a lot to do with the decision,” as well as “a need for a walking campus.”
However, minutes from August 1, 1980, Board of Trustees meeting indicates the Trustees agreed to enter into a lease agreement with the Foundation, with the understanding that “it will be a future building site for an academic structure and that the existing structures will be put to temporary use until it is necessary to remove them to permit construction.”
And, Lynn Simons, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees and one of two Wyoming advisers to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said, “I don’t think it (the Cooper property) has ever been presented as anything but a property to be eliminated. My experience in meeting with the Board of Trustees is that they are unanimous in opposing the building remaining where it is. They would be overjoyed if the thing was moved.”
Simons said her personal preference would be for some accommodation for the building with “removal as the best solution, considering the polarized feelings on this issue.”
The whole issue is further complicated by an amendment which WAHF members succeeded in attaching to the 1982 UW Capital Construction appropriations bill: “There shall be no demolition of the mansion without prior legislative approval, but the mansion may be moved, if necessary and feasible, without prior approval.” The amendment also charged the Board of Trustees to “explore retention of the Cooper Mansion on its present site for adaptive reuse.”
WAHF’s original Senate-passed amendment did not allow the university the option to remove the building without approval. The removal provision was added in the House.
President Veal, who said he “helped write the amendment,” claimed the university would have addressed those concerns anyway. He said he did not know when an adaptive reuse study would be conducted or whether the university would contract out to a private consultant or do it “in-house.” He acknowledged the amendment’s language allows for removal of the Cooper Mansion without exploring its potential for adaptive re-use.
Adaptive re-use, Veal said, “is extremely expensive and we have to consider how we are spending public money. We could put considerably more academic space there than the Cooper would provide.”
He said preliminary estimates by the university architect’s office indicate it would cost $750,000 to renovate the mansion although no careful study has been done.
“From a cosmetic standpoint, renovation does not look like a problem to me,” Supt. Simons said. “I’ve been involved in worse renovation projects,” but she did note that “most old homes do need to be rewired and that is a mammoth and expensive job.”
WAHF has urged the university to consider “wrap-around” construction where the mansion would become an integral part of a newer structure. “The new additions on the Agriculture and Engineering Buildings don’t show much imagination,” Carroll said, “and so wrap-around construction does not occur to them. The university is inclined toward late 1980s factory-style architecture for the campus.”
Preservationists’ suspicions about the university’s plans for the mansion were fueled in January, 1981, when President Jennings requested the Wyoming Recreation Commissioners table the Cooper Mansion nomination to the National Register. The previous December, the SHPO’s Consulting Committee, a statewide advisory group of historians, architects and archaeologists, appointed by Gov. Ed Herschler to approve or reject Register nominations, approved the mansion nomination over the university’s objections.
Jennings, McCue and John Ellbogen, who was then president of the University of Wyoming Foundation, had written to Jan Willson, State Historic Preservation Officer, declaring that the property “was not eligible for the Register.” They offered no explanation.
Some members of the Consulting Committee “resented the university’s statement about the mansion’s eligibility,” Mark Junge recalls. Junge is Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer and Resources Chief at the Wyoming Recreation Commission. “I don’t think there is anyone at the university qualified to make decisions about historical and architectural significance,” Junge said.
“Their letter was based on ignorance of the state’s historic preservation program,” Junge charged. “Had everyone understood the rules of the game from the start, things would have gone more smoothly. The university decision makers were advised by people who did not know what it was all about,” Junge added.
Although the Consulting Committee operates as an independent advisory body, the SHPO is an office within the Recreation Commission and Recreation Commissioners had the final word on the Cooper property. Responding to an appeal from President Jennings, they unanimously and without debate, voted to table the nomination rather than have the SHPO submit it to the Keeper of the National Register in Washington, D.C., for final approval. Never before had commissioners interfered with a Consulting Committee’s decision.
“It is interesting that a university president can call up a member of a commission appointed by the governor and have a National Register nomination stone-walled,” Junge said. “And this was done even though another body, also appointed by the governor, recommended that the nomination proceed through proper channels. So, who has the power? Who is running the preservation program?”
The nomination was tabled, in part, because the property was owned by the Foundation—technically, a private organization.
The Wyoming SHPO’s policy is to acquire private owner’s consent before submitting nominations to the Keeper of the Register.
But when the title changes hands in January and the building becomes state property, the SHPO has the option of submitting the nomination to the Keeper, along with any university objections.
Enrollment on the National Register can not save the building from demolition or removal. The university can alter, remove or destroy it. However, if any of those actions involve federal funding, licensing, or regulation, then the SHPO and the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation are allowed the opportunity to comment on that action. They can use “powers of persuasion” but they have no power to enforce their opinion on the building’s future. Presumably, the university hoped to avoid embarrassment over removing or destroying a National Register site by taking the actions they did in the case of the Cooper property.
Junge has urged university officials to hire a “qualified consultant” to conduct a historic sites inventory of the entire campus and determine each structure’s eligibility for the National Register. It would provide a “more rational decision-making process concerning the campus’ historic and architectural resources and avoid future conflict like that over the Cooper property,” Junge said.
President Veal said he is not opposed to the idea, “but right now I have greater need for our resources, principally our students’ needs,” he said. “There is nothing we would do to denigrate the university’s history, but I can’t build a monument and let the students sit in the street,” he added.
He did mention one possible project for the university’s centennial celebration—official recognition of Old Main as an historic site.
The immediate fate of the Cooper Mansion rests on Malone and Baker’s recommendation concerning C&I needs. If the firm recommends an addition to the present facility, the Cooper Mansion will remain—at least, for a while. If they recommend a separate facility, the trustees will vote to incorporate the Cooper into a new C&I building, remove it, or demolish it, even though demolition requires legislative approval.
“I would feel terrible if it were demolished,” Lynn Simons said. “I feel very strongly about preserving the remnants of the past—that sense of connection with the community we live in, the people we know. Wyoming is changing so rapidly and has so few old buildings. It is really important we maintain what we have. We can not forsake everything that has brought us to where we are now in rushing headlong into the future.”
Questions of Value, Worries Over Use
by Sherry Smith, Capitol Times (Cheyenne), October 1983, pp. 10-11.
(2nd part of the story was a question-and-answer session with President Veal)
The recent designation of Laramie’s Cooper Mansion on the National Register of Historic Places does not alter the University of Wyoming’s position on the building, according to University President Donald Veal. The Board of Trustees “acquired the property principally as a site for academic buildings,” Veal said, “and they haven’t seen anything that would cause them to change their minds.”
The future of the Cooper Mansion, a university property as of January 1983, hinges on plans for the Commerce and Industry building. The trustees, however, have not decided whether they will construct a new building, probably on the Cooper Mansion site, or add on to the present Commerce and Industry building. Until that decision is made, no action will be taken with respect to the Cooper property.
The Cooper Mansion was nominated to the National Register by the Wyoming Architectural Heritage Foundation (WAHF), a Laramie-based, statewide group dedicated to saving significant Wyoming buildings and sites. The property was enrolled on the Register by Carol Shull, Chief of Registration in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 8, 1983, over the university’s objections. In the official objection to the nomination, Pres. Veal explained that the university did not “wish to foreclose any options by listing the property on the National Register.”
Wyoming’s Consulting Committee (a Governor-appointed board made up of professional historians, archaeologists, and architects that reviews nominations) and the Keeper of the National Register both agreed that the Cooper Mansion was worthy of Register designation on architectural and historical grounds.
According to Shull, the mansion is “historically significant for its illustration of the culture and prosperity that the settlement of English families and their success in the cattle and oil industries brought to Wyoming in the early 20th century.” Further, she states, “Architecturally, the property is significant as the work of Laramie architect Wilbur Hitchcock, and as a unique adaptation of the Mission Revival and Pueblo styles of architecture.”
Beyond establishing the significance of the building which sites on a city block between 14th and 15th and Ivinson and Grand streets, immediately south of the present Commerce and Industry building, the Cooper Mansion confirms the right of citizens to nominate public buildings to the National Register.
While federal regulations require owner consent to nominate private property, they do not require “owner” consent to nominate public property. As a result, since the Cooper Mansion became state property this year, the university’s objections to the nomination could not stop the listing.
Dr. Murray Carroll, WAHF Chairman, said the group is very pleased that the building was finally listed, but noted “that an organization can now nominate public buildings, is the major victory.” Carroll said, “We don’t like knocking heads with the university. It hasn’t been particularly constructive for either side. But the university should remember they have other buildings that merit nomination and the Cooper Mansion opens up that possibility.”
A National Register designation, however, does not offer automatic protection for the Cooper Mansion. According to federal regulations, the university can treat the building as it wishes, providing no federal funds are used to alter or destroy the building. Even if federal funds are involved, the only protective mechanisms that come into play involve allowing the State Historic Preservation Office and the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation, a federal body, the opportunity to comment on any action. They have no power to enforce their opinion on the building’s future.
Carroll, however, believes that a certain “psychological factor” accompanies National Register properties, affording them a “prominence in the community and state that the Board of Trustees cannot ignore.” According to Carroll, “A university is supposed to be a constructive, cultural institution, and to have a reputation as destructive is not a position I would want to be in if I were on the Board of Trustees.”
Pres. Veal, on the other hand, said he believes that the listing does not change the university’s approach to the course it set several years ago—to ascertain Commerce and Industry’s needs and then act accordingly. He claimed that public opinion on the mansion is split, his mail “running about even with people saying that they wish the Gillette bulldozer operator worked in Laramie,” referring to an incident that occurred some years ago in Gillette when an operator drove a bulldozer into an apartment complex [and running over cars parked along the street].
The immediate future for the Commerce and Industry building, and consequently, the Cooper Mansion, remains uncertain primarily due to budget constraints on new capital construction. The Wyoming legislature appropriated money in 1982 for a planning study of C&I’s needs. Malone and Baker, a Sheridan architectural firm, did the study and submitted their reports.
However, Veal said he just received the seventh report and does not know whether they recommended a new free-standing building or an addition to the present C&I building. He said those reports are not presently open to the public because they are working documents. And he added that the ultimate decision on C&I will be the trustees’.
If the trustees decided to construct a new C&I building, and if there are appropriations available for it, then the trustees will decide the fate of the Cooper Mansion, either incorporating it into the new structure, building separately from it, or removing or demolishing it.
A footnote to the legislature’s 1982 university appropriation for the planning study, mandated that: “The Board of Trustees of the University of Wyoming shall explore retention of the Cooper mansion on its present site for adaptive reuse. The board shall report to the legislature its findings with respect to the feasibility of reuse. There shall be no demolition of the mansion without prior legislative approval, but the mansion may be moved, if necessary and feasible, without prior legislative approval.”
The university has not explored this matter to date, in its studies on C&I or in a separate study. And, according to Pres. Veal, that footnote “Disappeared” as of June 30, 1983, although he added that the university would still feel compelled to study adaptive reuse. “You wouldn’t ignore the legislature like that,” he said.
Dr. Carroll claimed that WAHF would lobby the legislature to get a continuation of the “footnote” requiring legislative approval before the university would tear down the mansion.
Pres. Veal said neither he nor the university trustees had decided the mansion’s fate. But he added, “My first concern is with the students of this institution….that is of higher concern than saving the Cooper property.” He said he has lived in the area where there is an enormous amount of “that kind of architecture: and that it is not unique. “I want to build a facility here that meets the needs of students. I’ve been very open and candid that that is more important to me than preservation. I think 100 years from now, if we can generate three more good minds and create four more good opportunities, it’s going to take society a whole bunch further down the road than preserving the Cooper property.”
Consulting Committee member Robert Righter, a supporter of the Cooper Mansion nomination said he believes that it might be unfair “to have the students in one corner and preservationists in the other. Preservationists’ interests are not necessarily antithetical to those of the students. Who is to say that a large new building on the Cooper space is in the better interest of students than open space along with retention of the mansion. Who’s to say that tearing down our past is in the best interest of the students. The argument that more buildings bear a direct relationship to quality of education is questionable.”
For the time being, opposing points of view about the Cooper Mansion will not be locked in dispute until the budget situation improves. Pres. Veal expects the planning phase for C&I to be completed by the end of this academic year, but he said the university will not approach the legislature for funds this year to act on those plans. And he maintains that if the studies indicate adaptive reuse of the Cooper Mansion is economical, the university would be open to that option.
In the meantime, there are no funds to make the Cooper Mansion usable. “I don’t want to give up the aesthetics of the campus,” he said, “but I certainly don’t have any dollars to fix it up right now. Wish I did.”
Ultimately, the fate of the mansion will rest on what the Board of Trustees perceives to be the greater good for the college, rather than the community. “From my point of view,” Veal said, “the institution is the higher priority.”
–Sherry L. Smith
Smith’s story of the Cooper Mansion updates her first report published in the December 1982, issue of Capitol Times.