Hugh H. Carson House — 512 Knox Place

The Hugh H. Carson House is an American Foursquare house built in 1916. It sits on a painted Joliet limestone foundation and is clad in clapboard siding with an asphalt-shingled, gabled, fore-and-aft ridge roof. It has significant Arts and Crafts and Prairie features including distinctive and unusual six-over-three (nine-light) and four-over-two (six-light) upper sash windows and one-light lower sash double-hung windows, and a triangular attic gable window matching the slope of the roof, reflected in the shallow-peaked trim board capping all three second-story windows on the front façade, and echoed in the gabled, fore-and-aft ridged front porch roof. It exhibits the horizontal, squat shape and embellishment typical of the Prairie style. The eaves are open in the Arts and Crafts style. A narrow trim belt topped with a small cap circumscribes the building immediately below the second-story windows.

The front façade has several dominant features. The full-width front porch, although common to many Joliet houses of this vintage, is unusual for its shallow-pitched, gabled, fore-and-aft ridged roof, as most front porches have a shallow-pitched hip or shed roof. Also unusual and dominating is the very distinctive triangular attic window centered under the roof ridge at the attic level.