750 Lafayette St
Denver, CO, USA

National Register of Historic Places - John and Elivera Doud House (Eisenhower, Mamie Doud, House; Summer White House; 5DV.747)

Statement of Significant:

The John and Elivera Doud House is nominated under Criterion B for its association with the lives of persons significant in our past. The Douds hailed from Boone, lowa, where John Sheldon Doud became wealthy through his family's ownership of an early Chicago-based meatpacking business that expanded into lowa. The family moved to Denver in 1905, where the following year they purchased and moved into the newly-built home at 750 Lafayette St. Although born in Boone in 1896, the Doud's daughter Mamie spent the first nine years of her life moving to Cedar Rapids, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and finally Denver. The remainder of her childhood was based in the family's Lafayette St. home. In 1916 she married Dwight David Eisenhower, a young army officer recently graduated from West Point, in its first-floor music room. Over the following decades, from the year of their marriage through the beginning of World War II, the couple continued to visit the family home in Denver at every opportunity. Living the transient life of a military family, Ike and Mamie viewed the Doud House in Denver as the only family home they could rely upon.

When Dwight Eisenhower first gained public attention upon being appointed commander of the American forces in North Africa and then supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during WWII, his world renown attracted intense public attention to the Doud Home in Denver. Throughout the fifteen years following the war, until the death of Elivera in 1960, Dwight and Mamie visited the Lafayette St. home frequently while he served as army chief of staff, president of Columbia University, the first commander of NATO, and then President of the United States. During the Eisenhower Administration the couple spent long winter and summer vacations at the residence, which became known as the Summer White House. With both army and political life forcing Ike and Mamie to move more than thirty times throughout their marriage, and due to their close relationship with the Douds, the couple viewed Mamie's family home in Denver as a place of permanence and relaxation that they could find nowhere else. The significance of the Doud House is therefore based upon its importance in the social and familial life of the President and First Lady.

The Doud House is a contributing structure within the locally-designated East 7th Avenue Historic District, a residential neighborhood consisting of more than 900 structures built between 1890 and 1930. Because of the residence's close association with the Eisenhowers, it became the most widely known address in Denver during the 1940s and 1950s. Since World War II, the house has been repeatedly written about and photographed, with frequent mention made in books, newspapers and magazines. Today the home at 750 Lafayette St. remains well-known in the Denver community, remembered with particular fondness by those who lived in the city during the years when it was frequently visited by the Eisenhowers. The property is little changed from the early 1900s, exhibiting not only its appearance as the Doud family home but also its appearance from the years during which the house was visited and inhabited as a vacation home by Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower. Still in use as a family home today, the Doud House exhibits a high level of historic integrity related to its period of significance from 1906 through 1960.