The West Walnut Street Historic District is a residential neighbourhood on the edge of the Carbondale downtown, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The district contains several dozen late-Victorian and early-twentieth-century homes that represent the architectural ambitions of the town's early professional class — Queen Anne, Craftsman, and Colonial Revival styles are all represented along the tree-lined streets.
The neighbourhood is walkable and the quality of the historic houses is high for a small southern Illinois city. The Reef House at 411 S. Poplar Street — a separate National Register property nearby — is a striking Victorian residence from the 1880s. Walking through the historic streets and seeing the preserved homes gives a sense of what Carbondale looked like before the university expanded to dominate the town's identity.