Where It All Started: Monticello’s Hutson House a ‘constant work in progress’ – Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

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The home of architect Keddy Hutson, one of the oldest houses in Monticello on Friday July 21, 2017.

MONTICELLO Millionaire's Row needs an archaeologist to fully appreciate how some of the massive houses grew from humbler sizes, as well as altogether different architectural styles.

Keddy Hutson is an architect, and he can tell from foundations, as well as old photos, just how North State Street a nationally designated historic district has evolved.

He and wife Ann Boswell own one of the oldest homes at 1004 N. State St., a 5,000-square-foot property in progress with "maybe 13 rooms," Hutson guesses. "A lot of State Street houses grew up from much smaller houses."

The two keep fit walking the 20 stairs from the first to second floor several times a day. The ceilings are 11 feet tall.

In 145 years, the house has only been in two families, the Moores and the Hutsons.

"I feel like we're stewards," Boswell says. "It's a constant work in progress. You have to be patient."

The exterior is a combination of wood, stucco and brick, the sheer size of which keeps paint stores in business.

"Painting it is a little bit like the Golden Gate Bridge, always something in progress," Hutson says.

Hutson grew up next door to the house he now owns, which his grandparents bought in 1939.

Walking down State Street, he saw a variety of architectural styles, and even within his grandparents' house, he saw the effect of changing tastes.

"Growing up here really impacted my career. It's why I became an architect," he says. One of his most recent projects has been redoing the Art Deco building that now houses Papa Del's in Champaign.

And he became an architectural archeologist.

The house was built in the 1870s, but an extensive 1917 renovation greatly enlarged it the family has also added on more recently changing it from the Victorian style to the Elizabethan Prairie School style, an early transitional style, that combined elements of several styles, Hutson explains.

"The entire roof structure was changed," Hutson says. "The living room used to be both a dining room and a parlor."

There was a sleeping porch added at some time, back when a breeze served as an air-conditioner.

Hutson can find features that are original, such as a fireplace in the room of their son, Boswell Hutson. It used to be his great-aunt's room. There's a trundle bed family heirloom here.

Ann Boswell points out "the biggest powder room ever." There's also a telephone room.

At one time, there were eight fireplaces; now there are three. Hutson says there used to be other chimneys.

There are cast stone sinks in the laundry area the servants would have used. Also in the basement, a youth theater area, with its own green room.

Rectangular designs in leaded windows and the brick porch piers show off the Prairie style popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright.

"The Prairie style utilizes geometry to express organic forms," Hutson says. The porch dominates the street view of the house.

North State Street Historic District was dominated by three families, the Moores, the Dightons and the Hotts, Hutson notes.

Allen F. Moore, for instance, was a congressman and member of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Maureen Holtz, author of "Images of America: Monticello," says the families were inter-related.

"Many of the people in high positions there lived in the nice houses on State and Charter and were officers in Pepsin," a popular patent medicine.

The Moores, originally in what is now the Hutson house, made their money from Pepsin and banking, and left 1004 N. State St. during the Depression, Hutson says.

The house was empty for a few years, and local boys took advantage, using it as a playhouse.

There are still traces of their shenanigans. Hutson points out starbursts centered in tiny holes in the glass in a couple of windows where pellets from air guns left their marks, still there 90 years later.

"It doesn't matter; there are storm windows, and now the holes are just part of the story," he says.

A tornado in 2001 forced Hutson and Boswell to make more changes, which they viewed as an opportunity to build an airy sunroom addition full of natural light.

"If you're going to have a tornado, make sure to have an architect around," Boswell says.

Local preservationists Karen Lang Kummer and Alice Novak successfully nominated Monticello's North State Street as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. They said the district includes Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Craftsman, Tudor Revival and Gothic Revival styles, among others. Colonial Revival is the dominant style represented in the district.

Besides the Moore-Hutson house, 19th-century homes they identified on North State Street included:

402 N. State St.: (Bender House, circa 1885) Queen Anne

412 N. State St.: (Moore-Hott House, circa 1890) Queen Anne/Colonial Revival

419 N. State St.: (circa 1875) Vernacular (not by a formally-schooled architect) with Italianate influence

508 N. State St.: (circa 1880) Also Vernacular with Italianate influence

517 N. State St.: (circa 1885): Cross gable, slight L-shape

612 N. State St.: (Nellie Kirby and William Herbert "Bert" England House, 1908) Georgian Revival with some Craftsman influence

707 N. State St.: (Sarah Netherton Dighton House, 1898) Dutch Colonial Revival

807 N. State St.: (Maxwell and Frances Dunn Hott House, circa 1880) Cross plan (altered)

902 N. State St.: (Crea-Hicks House, circa 1890) Queen Anne

915 N. State St.: (Preston Circa and Auzetta Hazen Houston House, 1873) Gothic Revival

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Where It All Started: Monticello's Hutson House a 'constant work in progress' - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette