Designed by architect Walter E. Ware of Salt Lake City and built by local contractor Frank Cook, the house was regarded as the most significant residence in Laramie at its completion.

The upper levels feature shingle style details, exemplified by the curved bays and rounded recessed window jambs.

The Virginia Cottage, a nearby two-story stucco and frame building, built in 1924 and employing details from the house's rear wing shows some characteristics of the Prairie Style.

[2] Edward Ivinson was born on September 20, 1830, on River Estate, St. Croix Island in the Danish West Indies, the son of an immigrant from England.

Edward's parents provided for his formal education in England where he remained until he emigrated to the United States in about 1852, to work New York.

Shortly thereafter the Ivinsons moved to Evansville, Indiana, then to Peoria, Illinois, where Edward became a naturalized United States citizen and worked in the dry goods business.

In Peoria they adopted a young girl -- Margaret Ellen Watson, the daughter of a critically ill tailor.

Edward left first and by early 1868 had decided to temporarily do business in a place that would eventually become Laramie, Wyoming (at the time Dakota Territory).

Jane also owned several parcels of land in and near the city, much of which would eventually be conveyed to the Episcopal Church through the Ivinson's estate.

Over the course of the next 10 years he would pay for the construction of a modern hospital in Laramie, fund the completion of the city's St. Matthews Cathedral, erect a monument to veterans of WW I and donate significant parcels of property to the Episcopal Church (most of which had originally been in his wife's name).

It had long been a dream of his first wife Jane to secure a place for ladies without means, where they could comfortably live their remaining years.

Edward Ivinson died on April 9, 1928, at the age of 97 in his suite of rooms in the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, Colorado.