Two grand homes on Grand Avenue Historic 100-year-old residences
Two historically significant houses at 719 and 919 Grand Ave. are within two blocks of each other in the nationally recognized University Neighborhood Historic District of Laramie. Prof. Mary Humstone and her students in UW’s American Studies Department conducted in-depth surveys of all the buildings in the area for the successful district nomination to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2009.
These two are the Holliday home at 719 Grand and the Cordiner home at 919 Grand. They are remarkable for lasting over 100 years despite a spate of removals that occurred along Grand by the 1960s.
Both houses were built for large extended families that had been in Laramie almost from the very beginning. And they share the same fate of having been converted into apartment buildings.
Similar structures
Although they are of different styles and were built almost 30 years apart, these two have many similarities. First, they are very large, compared to most others in the neighborhood. Both have two full stories plus a full basement and each has a smaller third storey as well. The 719 Grand house has 9,612 square feet, 919 Grand has 14,370 according to the Albany County Assessor’s website.
For contrast, the nearby Ivinson Mansion at 603 Ivinson Ave. also in the district, has four floors counting the basement, with 11,726 total square feet. A typical 3-bedroom house in Laramie today has about 2,000 square feet.
Both of the houses are asymmetrical in form, with several projections to the central cube plan. The front doors are off to one side, and they have front porches. Each has a gable (steeply pointed) projection on the façade and both include some shingle wall cladding on upper stories.
Striking features
The house at 919 Grand retains most, if not all, of its original decorative features. Its most striking feature is the very substantial front porch with robust stone piers supporting the roof.
The most striking feature to the façade of the 719 Grand house is a large round-arched “Romanesque” style window on the east, reflective to the new “Richardsonian Romanesque” style that was replacing Victorian architecture in the 1880s. Most other windows in the house are tall and narrow, more typical of Laramie’s earlier Victorian homes and downtown office buildings. The transom over the front door is also a Victorian design feature—in the 919 Grand house, the front door has no transom, but is flanked with large “sidelight” windows.
Craftsman styling
Another difference is that 919 Grand is clearly in the Craftsman style, with “knee” braces appearing to support the overhanging eaves, and also exposed (though possibly fake) rafter tails that are hallmarks of that style. These are seen clearly in the slightly overhanging third story, and in the front façade, where the second story appears to overhang the first.
The house at 719 Grand is of structural brick construction with a central hip roof while the other house is of frame construction with a brick veneer on the first story, and a cross gable roofline. The structural masonry may contribute to the fact that the smaller of the two, at 719 Grand, was valued in 2019 by the Assessor’s Office at almost two hundred thousand dollars more ($643,192) than 919 Grand. There are other variables that affect market value, however, including mechanical systems and garages.
J. T. Holliday House – 719 Grand
The house at 719 Grand was built in 1886 by and for Jethro Tabor Holliday (1845-1910), younger brother of William H. Holliday. Both brothers came to Wyoming in 1867 and established a lumberyard at Sherman, now a ghost town site between Laramie and Cheyenne. In 1872 the brothers established another lumberyard in Cheyenne—Jethro was the manager there until about 1879 when he came to Laramie.
Jethro’s brother W. H. Holliday had established a Laramie lumberyard in 1873. After Jethro joined him, the brothers’ business expanded into much more than the lumberyard. They became contractors and merchants who built the largest department store in Laramie.
The Holliday store eventually took up most of the west half of the block between Garfield and Custer Streets on the east side of 2nd St. until it burned in 1948. It had started with a single store in the middle of the block in 1882 that included an opera house. W.H. was president of the corporation, and led the expansion into a retail enterprise.
J. T. Holliday was vice-president in charge of the contracting side of the business. In some references, Jethro is listed as an architect, which may mean that he designed 719 Grand, though he would probably have picked up that skill on his own. The contracting business included a planing mill and lumberyard, which took up the entire block south of Kearney between 3rd and 4th Streets in Laramie where the Laramie Montessori School is located now.
Jethro and his wife Martha (known as Mattie) were married in 1878, and had three children: Alice, Frank Allan and Lewis J. Unfortunately, Jethro died in 1910 of a sudden heart attack at the age of 65. Soon the Holliday contracting business closed down. Oldest daughter Alice was 31 at the time and still living at home. She died in California in 1960 at age 81—one of 37 people named “Holliday” who are buried in Laramie’s Greenhill Cemetery. Most are related to one or the other of the two brothers.
Frank Allan became a local realtor; he and his wife Laura Breisch had four children—Alan, Frances, Virginia and Jane. He died in 1932 at age 49. Lewis J. married Rena Elias and also stayed in Laramie; at the time of the 1920 census they had three young children, David, Marion and Robert. They lived next door to where Lewis had grown up, at 715 Grand Ave. He was a salesman and manager of one of the plaster plants in Laramie; Lewis died in 1965 at age 79.
A. H. Cordiner House – 919 Grand
The larger of the two, the Cordiner house, was built in 1913 for Andrew “Harry” Cordiner (1875-1956) and may have been one of the last to be built by the Holliday Company; possibly it was planned before J.T. Holliday died. Apparently there was another Cordiner home at 915 Grand that was razed or moved to make way for this house. That space currently serves as the parking lot for the tenants. (On the Assessor’s website, the 919 Grand parcel with the house is listed with the 915 Grand vacant lot.)
By the 1920 census, Harry and his wife Marion (Mary) had five children. His widowed mother Elizabeth also lived with them. So the six bedrooms were put to good use—now there are six bathrooms as well.
Harry was born in Laramie, one of six children of Elizabeth and William “Cordenier.” The senior Cordenier, a “machinist” in the 1880 census, arrived with his family of six children close to when Laramie was founded in 1868. They came from Scotland—the spelling of their last name quickly changed from that used in the 1880 census. There were five boys in the family and one girl; most stayed in the area as there are 24 “Cordiner” burials in Greenhill Cemetery.
Harry Cordiner attended UW, and after graduation “passed the state examination in 1901” according to Bartlett’s History of Wyoming published in 1918. It doesn’t specify for what, but presumably he became a licensed pharmacist. He started working for Eggleston & Desmond Drug Company at 209 S. 2nd St. It became the A.H. Cordiner Drug store when Eggleston died and Harry took over in 1910. Now the former downtown drug store space is occupied by Chalk N Cheese specialty shop.
Local landlords
When I came to Laramie in 1965, 719 Grand had a sign out front advertising tourist rooms. After that, the sign said “Myers Apartments” for several schoolteachers named Myers who owned it. It had been converted to multiple residences by the 1930s and was known as the “Holiday Apartments.” However, 919 Grand became the home of several fraternities, starting with Sigma Chi in the 1930s and was not converted to apartments until much later.
Each of these historic houses contains more apartments than would appear. There are eight bathrooms in 719 Grand—six at 919—giving an indication of the number of separate apartments in each. Different local owners have formed Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs) to own and maintain them. This means, among other things, that the buildings are not taxable as entities in themselves; normally members of a LLC report their share of taxable income on their personal taxes.
As local owners, it also means that they can keep an eye on the buildings more closely than an absentee owner might. Both appear to be well maintained with appropriate lawns and fencing that enhance the street view of the buildings.
On the National Register
These two houses are in a section of Laramie called the “University Neighborhood Historic District.” The National Register of Historic Places awarded this designation on December 18, 2009. It is a 24-block area bounded on the north by University Ave., on the south by Custer St., and on the west by 6th St. Most buildings in the district were constructed between 1872 and 1958. Once it was part of an area of Laramie called the “Tree Area,” though now surrounding areas have tall trees too.
The district consists of 269 buildings that were determined to be “contributing,” meaning that they, like these two, meet the requirements of being at least 50 years old and not substantially remodeled. There were 51 “noncontributing buildings” in the boundaries. Noncontributing buildings have been remodeled, especially on the façade, or were built too recently when the survey was done.
A listing within a historic district on the National Register can help build community support for retaining historic properties by designating those that are especially significant. States can adopt protective legislation, however, in Wyoming it does not restrict the owners in any way. Houses can be moved, remodeled or demolished. But this designation can make the owners of income-producing properties like these eligible to receive special grants or tax credits through programs administered by the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office in Cheyenne, though funds for these grants are limited.
So far they appear to have been successfully adapted to suit the needs of the Laramie community. We might keep an eye on 919 Grand, however as the only building left on the block with the UW welcoming monument at 9th and Grand. It could fall to expansion in the future. Cheyenne has placed signs to indicate a historic district near Frontier Park, though that has not been done for the Laramie historic districts (another is downtown Laramie).
By Judy Knight
Source: Albany County Assessor’s Office
Caption: 2016 photo of 719 Grand Ave., built in 1886 by Jethro T. Holliday
Source: Judy Knight
Caption: 2020 photo of 919 Grand Ave., built in 1913 for Harry Cordiner and family