This splendidly restored house is in a kind of variant of the Second Empire style that must have seemed very modern when the architect drew it. It has the exuberantly eclectic boundary-crossing details that made Victorian architecture an adventure. Unlike the strict revivalists, Victorian architects like the unknown who designed this house did not consider themselves bound to a pedantically correct interpretation of one period. Unlike the modernists who came after the strict revivalists, the Victorians felt free to pillage their ideas from every historical period. The result could be an atrocity if the pillaging was done without taste, but with taste it could create complex compositions that were like nothing that had been seen before, but were nevertheless in internal harmony.

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