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(Photograph by Steve C. Martens)
Unlike the more eclectic South Eighth Street Residential neighborhood (CS27), the North Fargo Builders’ Residential District is notable for the consistency of style among its small- to moderately sized houses. Most of the houses are Tudor Revival and were built from the 1920s to the 1940s. Local carpenter-builders such as Emil Brant, Eric Edlund, and Olaf Anderson—many of them Scandinavian immigrants and father-and-son construction teams—built one or two houses a year on a speculative basis. Most were based on published pattern-book designs and few were the products of creative architectural input, although there are houses in the neighborhood designed by Paul W. Jones and S. Marius Houkom. The houses, many of them smaller than nine hundred square feet in area, make effective use of handcrafted and picturesque details. Curved sidewalks and extensive landscape development give the neighborhood a well-integrated feeling of unity and harmony. Mature elm trees branch over the north-south streets to give the impressive effect of an arched canopy.