Contractor and designer Carroll Ishee (1921–1982) bought this 4.3-acre parcel in 1969 and built twelve houses. A native of Hattiesburg, Ishee studied law before becoming a real estate developer in 1948. After self-training in residential design using publications from the Small Homes Council of the University of Illinois, he began building houses in the early 1950s, first in the Gulf Hills subdivision. In 1963, while recovering from a heart attack, he focused on drawing and architectural journals, and subsequently he adopted an organic approach to building. Ishee specialized in land development on the edges of marshes and bayous that others shunned, designing houses that celebrated the Coast’s boggy ecosystems. He eventually built more than one hundred houses along the Coast, most in Ocean Springs. Because of grade changes, his houses are often multilevel and raised high above the marshes, creating a treehouse effect. Many from his later period feature a concrete bridge leading from parking to the main entrance, as seen at 318 Lovers Lane. Ishee’s materials are inexpensive and low maintenance: unpainted board-and-batten (often cypress) siding, gabled asphalt-shingle roofs, cement-asbestos fascias and exterior panels, glass strategically located for views, concrete floors, sheetrock walls, fluorescent uplighting, and studs exposed and finished as trim.
Several blocks southeast at 319 Magnolia Avenue, the house Ishee built for his family in 1969, after Hurricane Camille destroyed their existing home, stands behind a dense screen of trees. A rare Ishee commercial building, a concrete-block dentist’s office (1975; 649 Jackson Avenue), nestles in the woods near downtown and is accessible by a raised walk.