View Full List of National Register: Wyoming Listings

Lulu McCormick Junior High School (Emerson Building) is eligible to the National Register of Historic Places Under Criteria A and C. It is eligible under Criterion A for its direct association with the growth of education in Cheyenne. The building reflects the primary importance the Cheyenne community attached to the education of its youth from its inception as a railroad town in 1867. Schools represented the widespread belief in the value of universal education. Education was one of the first critical issues dealt with by Cheyenne’s first citizens and by the first Wyoming territorial legislature. The formation of school districts and the building of schools reflected how Cheyenne’s citizens felt about the permanency of their community and their faith in its future. In addition to involving the community in the activities of the school (musical performances, dramatic and athletic events), Lulu McCormick Junior High was used as a gathering place for public assemblies and civic celebrations, a place for the community to come together. Lulu McCormick Junior High School was the first building constructed in Wyoming specifically as a junior high school. Therefore, it reflects the innovation of junior high schools in our national education, a movement that began in 1910. During its Fortieth Year Celebration in 1969-1970, United States Senator Gale McGee presented the school with an American flag that had been flown over the nation’s capitol.

The building is also eligible under Criterion C in the area of architecture as an outstanding example of the Collegiate Gothic style in educational buildings and as the work of two master architects, William Dubois and Frederick Hutchinson Porter. It is the most elaborate of the three remaining educational structures in Cheyenne to represent this style (the others being Cheyenne High School and Johnson Junior High School, both of which were designed by Dubois).