Built in 1900, the Cook House was designed in the Queen Anne style popular in the United States from 1880-1910. The house sits on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Kansas Street, facing Eighth Avenue, in a residential neighborhood with newer houses to the south. The main facade is flanked by two fir trees. There are various deciduous and evergreen shrubbery around the house and some diciduous trees at the rear. A decorative finial pipe railing fence, with decorative wire, runs along Eighth Avenue and across the property to the south.
Rising from a stone foundation with cement pargeting, the house is a two-and-one-half story wood frame building clad with clapboard siding. It is capp.ed by a steeply-pitched crossgable roof, covered with asphalt shingles. The main (west) facade and side (south) facade have the most decorative ornamentation. There is a porch running across half of the main facade with a triangular pediment entrance. The roof is supported by delicate turned supports with a spindle ballustrade and brackets. To the right of the porch is a two-story projecting bay with decorative spindlework in the gable end (a sunburst pattern) and under the roof overhang left by cut-away bay windows. There is fish-scale siding in the gable end. The south side is similar, except the bay window occurs only on the first floor. There are wood double-hung 1/1 windows with 2/2 wood storms. The large window by the entrance has a large pane of glass bordered by smaller panes. The north facade has no decorative elements, but the materials are similar to the other facades. The rear facade has a porch across the first floor with square columns and decorative spindlework. The second floor extends out over the porch on half of the facade and there is a balcony with delicate turned porch supports and spindlework ballustrade and brackets. The gable end has decorative spindlework and fish-scale siding...
The Cook House was built by Fayette L. Cook, the first president of the Normal School from 1885-1919. Mr. Cook arrived in Spearfish in 1885, a year after the construction of the first building at the Normal School. Mr. Cook was principal, the only teacher, and janitor in the first year, but the school continued to grow as a teachers college. It is known today as Black Hills State College. [University]
Fayette Cook was instrumental in constructing several new buildings on campus. A main school building was built in 1887, a Women's Dormitory in 1900, the Schience Hall in 1904, and an addition to the main school building in 1908. ' The new gymnasium was built in 1919 and dedicated in his name upon his retirement. He stayed at the school until his death in 1922. The Women's Dormitory was named after his wife, Wenona Cook, upon her death in 1913. His second wife, Emma Cook, lived in the house until she sold it in 1940.