The Cheyenne League of Women Voters participated in the renaming ceremony of the 1932 federal building in Cheyenne to the Louisa Swain Federal Office Building. It honors of the first woman in the world to cast a ballot in an election on Sept. 6, 1870, giving her equal rights as men.
At the ceremony on Oct. 17, the League distributed commemorative coins with Swain’s image.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., who was the driving force in the passage of public law 117-120 to rename the building at 308 W. 21st St., traced Swain’s journey from an orphanage in Charleston, S.C., to her settlement in Laramie to her death in Maryland. Swain “was specifically chosen to cast the first vote because she was an upstanding woman,” Lummis explained, “and because the women in Laramie knew it was a historic event.”
Leigh Anne Bunetta, regional counsel for the Rocky Mountain region of the General Services Administration, noted the Neoclassical-style structure was part of its small inventory of historic buildings. But she surprised the audience when she said it was the only federal building in Colorado, Montana, North and South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming that was named for a woman. The building, designed by noted Cheyenne architect William Dubois, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.