Laramie Historic Homes

The Historic Living Project
The Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund

415 9th Street, Laramie Wyoming

1916 Queen Anne and Prairie - Duncan and Janice Harris

Back in the early 1900s, architectural housing designs could be ordered from a Sears, Roebuck and Company catalogue. It is believed that this hybrid design built in 1916, with style elements of Queen Anne and Prairie, was a Sears Roebuck house, purchased by the owners and shipped to Laramie on the Union Pacific Railroad.

From 1908 to 1940, Sears, Roebuck and Co. had more than 450 different housing styles and sold approximately 75,000 homes in the nation through their popular mail order Modern Homes program. Customers could choose a house to suit their individual tastes and budgets. This house represents what a custom catalogue ordered home could entail, and by a family setting down their roots and establishing a home in Laramie amid the wide-open prairie.

This house, built in 1916, is an interesting mix of Queen Anne, Prairie, and Stick styles of architecture. The house was actually ordered from a Sears, Roebuck and Company catalogue. It is believed the original owners, the Palmquists, had it shipped to Laramie on the Union Pacific Railroad. The house includes all of its original design features, with the exception of a living room and den extension. In the Queen Anne style, it is asymmetrical with an emphasis on verticality, with front-facing gables and textured shingles. It also has Doric columns supporting the front porch, an oval bay window on the south side of the house and original leaded glass windows.

This video is a brief summary of the The Historical Living Project, a video-based journalism initiative that provides residents and visitors with a historical narrative of the people and historic homes of Laramie, from its beginnings as a railroad town, to a thriving community that values its sustainable architecture and historic heritage. This project includes many of the houses in the National Historic District, the University Neighborhood of Laramie.

Janice Harris, Homeowner

Judy Knight, Local Historian, Docent

Chamois Anderson, Producer

Keith Perschino, Film Assistant

Ted Haskell, Project Assistant