Williams Conservatory (University of Wyoming)

The Williams Conservatory was built in 1994. According to the university, it was funded largely by private donations from Louis O. and Terua P. Williams, with the National Science Foundation adding money for the enhancement and maintenance of research. Louis Williams earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Wyoming under the botanist Aven Nelson, then a doctorate at Washington State University. His career took him to Harvard, to the Pan-American School of Agriculture in Honduras and to the US Department of Agriculture, then to the head of a department at Chicago's Field Museum from 1964 until he retired in 1973; he was also long the editor of the American Orchid Society Bulletin. Terua, a schoolteacher in Jackson Hole, had met him when he was a young botanist. Longtime supporters of the botany department, the Williamses gave their name to the greenhouse; according to Wikipedia, a palm, Cryosophila williamsii, bears Louis's name.

The greenhouse is connected to the Aven Nelson Building. That building, originally the university's library, was designed in the 1920s by the local architect Wilbur Hitchcock according to the American Heritage Center; the botany department moved in during 1959-1960, after the Coe Library opened in 1957. In 2015 the Laramie Boomerang noted that this glass greenhouse remained little known to local residents.

The Laramie Boomerang described the greenhouse in 2015 as a “glass building” at the southwest corner of campus, and a 2009 photograph on Wikimedia Commons shows several light-framed volumes with sloping glazed roofs set against the brick facade of the Aven Nelson Building. The main entrance, on the south side, opens into an atrium: a central rock covered in flowers and vines, a small fountain, a 25-foot evergreen tree (about 7.5 m) that began, the staff say, as a small Christmas tree, and a fig tree. Several other rooms lead off the atrium, including one full of succulents and a space that grows the plants for the twice-yearly plant sale. A bistro table and chairs, added recently, let visitors read or study. Staff describe the air as constantly warm and humid, with flowering plants all year.

On the east side, the wheelchair-accessible entrance opens into the passage that links the greenhouse to the Aven Nelson Building. The research spaces are separate rooms, limited to University of Wyoming faculty, students and staff; the rest is open to the public.

For the university, the greenhouse holds hundreds of plants from 76 families; the Laramie tourism office and the American Heritage Center speak of more than 600 tropical, neotropical, temperate and arid species, two figures that are hard to reconcile. Recent additions named by the site include a Black Bat Flower (Tacca chantrieri), a Pelican Flower (Aristolochia gigantea), a couple of Hanging Lobster Claw plants (Heliconia rostrata) and two titan arums (Amorphophallus titanum), which will take years to bloom and which the university hopes will draw new visitors. The Boomerang also mentions a fig tree, succulents and carnivorous plants that appeal to children. A database of the collection is under development.

The greenhouse serves first of all the botany department's research (the effects of drought or of genetic changes on growth, according to a researcher quoted in 2015), then teaching and outreach: tours and lessons for schools, workshops on plant care, propagation or pollinators, and plant sales and swaps announced on social media.

The greenhouse stands at the intersection of 9th Street and University Avenue, west of Old Main, on the Laramie campus. According to the university's visit page it is open on weekdays (the About page speaks of daily opening, so it is worth confirming before coming), admission is always free and group tours should be booked at least a week ahead. Free street parking is found on 9th Street, south of the greenhouse, and on neighboring streets.

Staff see it as a refuge from Laramie's harsh winter, and the website invites visitors to read, paint or hold an event there within its guidelines. The Rocky Mountain Herbarium occupies the third floor of the Aven Nelson Building, to which the greenhouse is connected.