Dixon House
a.k.a. Moore House
38127 LA 42, Prairieville, LAThe Dixon House is locally significant within the context of the Ascension Parish community of Prairieville because its rarity and age accord it the status of a local architectural landmark.
The unincorporated community of Prairieville is prominently featured on the U.S.G.S. topographic maps for Ascension Parish. Set in the parish's northern sector, it stretches for approximately twenty square miles in a trapezoidal shape. Historically the area was agricultural, but in recent years it has experienced an explosion in population as a bedroom suburb of the nearby Baton Rouge metroplex. In many ways, this is due to its proximity to the Interstate 10 corridor and U.S. Highway 61 (Airline Highway). Although there is no central business district, the community now has a sizeable and growing building stock, most of it slab-on-grade ranch houses.
In the early to mid-1980s, the parish was covered by the Division of Historic Preservation's comprehensive Historic Structures Survey, which records each building over fifty years old. These records reveal a total of fifty-one buildings which can be considered historic because of their age. The vast majority of these are bungalows or late nineteenth/early twentieth-century unadorned cottages. There are also a few cottages with modest Queen Anne Revival features such as a polygonal bay. The Moore House is conspicuous in Prairieville as one of only five structures from the mid-nineteenth century. All five are galleried cottages with relatively plain detailing. One of them has replacement Eastlake columns. Another has been moved and raised a full story above grade on concrete blocks. The Dixon House and one or two of the other mid-nineteenth-century houses can legitimately be seen as landmarks in Prairieville because they collectively represent the community's earliest extant architectural heritage. They also stand as rare surviving historic relics in a rapidly changing, now largely suburban landscape. In addition, the Dixon House derives significance from its very unusual vernacular attempt to create a Doric frieze, a feature not found on any other house in the region.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.