425 3rd Street Southwest
Faribault, MN, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Louis Carufel and E. LaRose House (Shaft House)

Statement of Significance:

The Louis and E, LaRose Carufel House is one of the most architecturally significant houses within the context of Faribault’s aesthetic development. (This context spans both the Minnesota Historical Society's contexts; EarJy Agriculture and River Settlement and Agricultural Development and Railroad Construction.) It represents an early and elaborate, although altered, version of the rare Gothic Revival style. The house has further significance as a high style rendering in native stone. Although fourteen limestone residences exist in Faribault today, eleven of them were built in a simple vernacular style that displays a variety of stylistic embellishments. Of the remaining three, the James Dobbin House (1874, 1901) and the Carufel House (1877), were built in the Gothic Revival Style. The third, the Thomas McCall House, was built in the French Empire style and later renovated as Italianate.

Locating on the Straight River the early residents had easy access to high quality limestone deposits within a mile of the Faribault settlement. Faribault's first three quarries were opened in the mid-1850s and owned separately by Alexander Faribault, Charles Wood and M.N. Pond. Proximity to natural building blocks did much to affect Faribault's architectural prosperity. The availability of native stone was complemented by the arrival of immigrant stone masons, many Irish and German, who drew their cutting and mason techniques from a European stone building tradition.

Faribault, Minnesota would become known for its treasury of turn-of-the-century ecclesiastical, institutional and commercial architecture. As the community and its institutions grew, so did civic and personal pride. The fine designs which flourished from the 1860s to the early 1900s were not, however, limited to public or ecclesiastical architecture; the designs of private homes displayed the same pride and sophistication as their more imposing institutional neighbors.

The built environment of Faribault came to represent the desire of Faribault residents to forge a physical setting that would speak a visual language of civic pride for the self-proclaimed "Athens of the West." That language would articulate Faribault's appreciation of education, professionalism, prosperity, culture and beauty.

The Louis Carufel House was constructed in 1877 for the early flour mill owner by stone mason C. O'Brien, although nothing is known about O'Brien. Early photographs show the original design to have pointed arch Gothic windows in the wall dormers, and iron cresting over the entrance bay and the window bays. In 1883 the Carufel's remodeled their stone house by modifying the windows with bracketed crowns. However, the changes made to the exterior of the building were highly sympathetic to the original design and accurately reflect the change in architectural taste in the last quarter of the 19th century. This house continues to be a well-maintained example of Gothic Revival residential architecture in native stone. Notable characteristics include the steep pointed gables with gingerbread bargeboards, wall dormers, hood molds over the windows, and bay windows.