the Cooper house
Historic Mansion Has Academic Future | Cooper Family Legends Still Persist
American Studies wants Cooper Mansion
By Joe Majenski, BI writer, The Branding Iron, Thursday April 14, 1988
UW's American Studies program may have the answer to questions about the future of the Cooper Mansion, according to UW officials.
The American Studies program is expanding, and there is not any space on campus into which the program could expand, said Eric Sandeen, program head. Program officials want to move into the vacant mansion, located on university property at the corner of l5th Street and Grand Avenue.
There are three possible ways in which to make the mansion functional --restore, renovate or "adaptive reuse " American Studies officials have decided to take the "adaptive reuse" alternative because it is less expensive than restoring or renovating the mansion, Sandeen said.
Sandeen said the American Studies program officials think they can make the mansion usable at a smaller cost than that estimated by the Friends of the Cooper Mansion, which said final renovation could cost as much as $500,000.
The program is able to finance improvement costs of the mansion over a period of time through endowment funds, Sandeen said. However, the program cannot afford to pay the initial large sum of money needed for the cost of improvement to move in, Sandeen said, adding that the program is presently working on a loan agreement with UW.
A possible alternative for the university would be to advance the American Studies program money that the program would normally get on a yearly basis. UW would then own the building until the program paid the university back.
If the loan is approved, the American Studies program, along with the Historical Preservation Center for Rocky Mountain Culture and Wyoming's folk arts coordinator, may be moving into the mansion as early as August 1989.
Plans for the mansion include making the first floor semi-public, Sandeen said. Films could be shown and small music concerts could be held. The second floor would be made into offices.
The Cooper Mansion was designed by UW architect Wilbur Hitchcock and built by Laramie builder August Spiegelburg in 192O. Historical figure Frank Cooper commissioned the mansion to be built, and the Cooper family lived in the mansion until 1979.
The mansion's mission/pueblo architecture reflects the cattle and oil baron periods of the early 2Oth century West. The mansion has been enrolled on the National Register for Historic Places since August 1983.
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Historic Mansion Has Academic
Future
By Nannette Bulebosh, Sunday staff writer, Sunday Magazine Cheyenne - June 5, 1988
The University of Wyoming Trustees' recent decision to turn the Cooper Mansion in Laramie over to the American Studies Department was music to the ears of a passionate group of the building's "friends," who spent eight years trying to convince apparent non-friends of its importance in Wyoming's history.
For awhile they were convinced that the 67-year-old historic residence, now vacant and somewhat disheveled, would fall victim to bulldozers as, they say, so many other valuable structures in the state have done.
The mansion's exotic story is one of luck, the sudden appearance of some magic money, and changing economic forces. The age-old distrust of inherited wealth -- a resentment as American as the Constitution -- also played a role.
"There's a kind of serendipity in the whole thing," said Dr. Eric Sandeen, director of the UW American Studies Department, as he recalled the story. "I was able to come up with the money to solve what had become a big problem for the university," Sandeen said.
Built by the offspring of entrepreneur Frank Cooper in 1921, the mansion stands at the corner of Grand Avenue and 15th Street, one of the busiest sections of Laramie. The Coopers commissioned Laramie architect Wilbur Hitchcock to design a home similar to ones they'd seen in Southern California. The result was an eclectic combination of modern and classical styles, part pueblo and mission, and part art deco.
"What I think is that the Coopers looked over at the Iverson Building on the other side of town and said to Hitchcock, 'Build me something that looks as unlike that as possible,'" Sandeen joked. "Because this is certainly unique."
The intent at the time was to use the site for additional academic buildings, possibly for a new Commerce and Industry Building.
"My first concern is with the students of this situation," said UW President Donald Veal in 1983. "I've lived in an area where there is an enormous amount of that kind of architecture. It's not all that unique."
Others in the Laramie community and on the UW faculty disagreed. They formed organizations such as the Wyoming Architectural Heritage Foundation and the Friends of the Cooper Mansion in order to fight the demolition.
In 1983, the mansion was put on the National Register of Historic Places, much to the apparent disapproval of Dr. Veal and others at UW, although he said at the time "our position hasn't changed."
But the designation did make it harder to contemplate demolition. New trustee members and a new administration were left with a building that seemed to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. There were lots of ideas for potential use, but nobody to pay for any of them. And by then the C&I department was no longer looking for expansion.
Last year Sandeen proposed spending $160,00O from a little used trust fund, the Coe/Kuehn estate for renovation into new American Studies facilities, which are currently crowded near the English department in the Hoyt Building.
The Cooper will also become the new headquarters for several other new or current programs, such as the Center for Rocky Mountain Culture Study, a new Historic Preservation office and the state Folk Arts Coordinator.
That takes care of the former home's upstairs. Two big rooms downstairs will become public rooms for seminars, lectures, celebrity guest receptions and other functions for both the university and the community.
There will also be a small Hemingway Library. The author was a good friend of Col. and Mrs. Cooper, Barbara's brother and sister-in-law.
Out back, in the former squash court/garage, UW President Dr. Terry Roark has proposed a University Visitors Center, still absent from the century old campus. University funds will be used for the building's conversion, with the Kuehn trust going toward the main house.
"I think it's great," said Rick Headlee, one of the founding members of the Save the Cooper project, about the Cooper's proposed uses. "This is the best of all possible worlds, and beyond the expectations that any of us ever had."
Jamie Egolf, head of the Friends and also a founding member, said the building will be "just exactly right for these purposes."
"One of the things I think this says is that we can tolerate differences in Laramie," Egolf said. "We can tolerate odd, eccentric ideas and people and buildings in our state."
She noted that there was some resentment about the Coopers' wealth from Laramie citizens and UW administration. Some longtime residents saw no reason to save the building when, "What did the Coopers ever do for us?"
Others didn't like to be reminded of the earlier successes of British "cattle barons" such as Frank Cooper, who made fortunes from Wyoming's oil and livestock but never became full-fledged Wyoming citizens.
Headlee said that without question, the Coopers were unique. But the fact remains that the building is important in itself. Headlee claims the mansion is a perfect example of Wyoming's "global village" of architectural styles.
"People say that it isn't typical of Wyoming's Architecture," Headlee said. "Well, what is typical? Is it the Whipple House in Cheyenne? The Iverson Mansion? The whole point is that there wasn't a typical style ... we're not that old. We haven't enough generations yet in Wyoming to evolve a style."
Egolf credits UW trustee Bryan Sharratt, members of the Architectural Heritage Foundation and the growing number of supporters in Laramie for the saving of the Cooper Mansion. More than 90 residents spoke out at a hearing last year, which was a major factor in the UW trustees' new position.
She also sees the building's exciting new future as an example of Laramie's new potential for growth.
"The Cooper Mansion, along with the Territorial Prison and other projects, are saying that there is going to be some growth here, and that the recession may end," Egolf said. "Not just financial but also a growth in morale. The morale in Laramie is very low right now, but I think there's some hope finally that maybe there will be some new industry -- tourism for example -- that we can do things ourselves.
"We don't have to depend on the railroad or the Legislature."
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Cooper Family Legends Still Persist
By Nannette Bulebosh, Sunday staff writer, Sunday Magazine Cheyenne - June 5, 1988
"His wife had been through with him before but it never lasted. He was very wealthy, and would be much wealthier, and he knew she would not leave him ever now ... she was not a great enough beauty anymore at home to be able to leave him and better herself, and she knew it and he knew it."
In "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, by American author Ernest Hemingway, the indulgently rich Macomber, 35, finally grows into manhood while on an African safari with his wife.
The hero had shown himself to be a coward the day before, when he bolted from a lion. His wife, in response, slept with the safari guide.
But now, while hunting buffalo, Macomber feels that rush of adrenaline, that utter lack of fear, that powerful shot of machismo that Hemingway so frequently glorified.
"More of a change than any loss of virginity," observes the guide, Wilson, in Hemingway's story. "Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear."
The story, with its description of American wealth, is of some interest in Wyoming, which has at least one Macomber-like character in its history.
Many historians believe that the characters of Macomber and his wife were loosely based on Col. and Mrs. Richard Cooper, who were good friends of Hemingway's and who lived in Laramie before and after World War II.
It is some kind of poetic justice that the Cooper Mansion will soon house the University of Wyoming's American Studies Department (see adjoining story). Most university American Studies students spend a great deal of time reading the works of authors like Hemingway. And in Laramie, the students will have an advantage, for the building will house its own Hemingway library.
Col. Richard Cooper's life, by all indications, was a Western version of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." Like the Macomber character, Cooper was rich, handsome and loved to travel and hunt, particularly in Africa. He maintained friendships with several celebrities of the day, including Hemingway, David Niven and the Baron von Blixen.
Blixen, who was briefly married to writer Isak Dineson and immortalized in the latter's autobiographical "Out of Africa," devoted a chapter to Cooper in his own autobiography, according to UW American Studies Chairman Dr. Eric Sandeen.
Col. Cooper served as best man at one of Hemingway's weddings, and hosted the author often at his hunting lodge in East Africa and at his Laramie home. His death in 1952, while not as violent as Macomber's, did occur in Africa.
Cooper and his brother and sister, John Hartshorne and Barbara, were all born in England, but came to Laramie in 192O, shortly after oil was discovered on the ranch once owned by their father, Arthur Francis Thomas Cooper. They were the ones who commisioned the mansion that now sits at 15th and Grand, at the entrance to the UW campus.
A.F.T. Cooper, a character no less colorful than his son, had arrived in Laramie from Derby, England in the 187Os. As a member of a well-to-do family, the elder Cooper was able to purchase 5,2OO acres on Rock Creek and build a ranch.
Frank Cooper was the epitome and, some say, the leading member of the so- called "cattle barons" who were collectively instrumental in southern Wyoming's development. Already wealthy, he dreamed of an even larger fortune, and succeeded. He and a partner developed the first means to freeze and transport beef by rail and eventually established Laramie as the cold storage center for the Union Pacific Railroad.
When he sold the ranch in 19O4 and moved back to England, Cooper wisely retained the mineral rights. His three children journeyed back to Laramie to oversee the investment. By law they had to be Wyoming residents in order to collect the royalties.
They hired Laramie architect Wilbur Hitchcock to design for them a home similar to ones they had seen in Santa Barbara, Calif. The result was a hodgepodge of several different styles, most notable mission and pueblo, and a structure that is clearly unique in Wyoming.
John Cooper took up auto racing, which led to his untimely death in Europe.
Barbara Cooper never married, although there was talk of a serious romance in London during World War II, when she served as fire warden during the bombings. After the war she returned to Laramie, pursuing her interests in painting and archeology.
After Richard and his wife died, Barbara raised the couple's children, Sylvia and Richard, although Sylvia spent most of her time with her maternal grandparents.
The younger Richard also took up adventurous hobbies. He once worked on his motorcycle inside the house on an Oriental rug. And there are demonic sketches remaining on the basement walls of the mansion, indicating an apparent interest in the occult or something similar.
Richard died in March of 1979. Barbara followed a few months later. Sylvia, the sole family survivor, lives in Colorado but was not involved in the eight year Save the Cooper Mansion project.
The Cooper Mansion, now owned by the university, has been vacant since Barbara's death. Still standing on the property are the large squash court, a garage, carport, patio, and hanging cast bell.
Still imaginable are the celebrity picnics, cultured affluence and lives that, at least occasionally, must have been lived without "bloody fear."
No wonder we're so interested in them.
