His father, George Laver, was a leading solicitor and his mother Mary Ann—; m. 9 June 1859 Elizabeth Fox in Dover, England, had twin sons and a daughter.

[citation needed] He entered the 1866 competition to design the New York State Capitol at Albany and was awarded one of the premiums, participated with Thomas Fuller, and Arthur Delavan Gilman in planning a revised design.

[citation needed] In 1871 Thomas Stent and Laver won the competition to design the new city hall and law courts for San Francisco.

[2] Eight years after Laver's death, the unfinished building was destroyed in the fire following the 1906 earthquake.

[3] Laver was the architect of San Francisco's first brownstone, the neo classical James C. Flood Mansion[4] and, not far away, in Oakland, the grand Victorian, Ellen Kenna House.