The mansion, also known as Cedarhurst, was first built as a simple country farm house shortly after the American Civil War.

The Cordenio Severance House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 for its local significance in the themes of architecture and law.

[2] It was nominated for its association with Cordenio Severance, a leading attorney in Saint Paul, Minnesota, from 1887 to the 1920s, and for being an example of a grand country estate.

[4] The Cordenio Severance House has two Neoclassical columned porticos, a 100-foot (30 m) veranda, a formal ballroom with a pipe organ, three fireplaces, and an English rose garden.

Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and William Howard Taft all visited the mansion, and Central Intelligence Agency meetings were once held in the library.