Cottages showing the impact of Andrew Jackson Downing's designs published in his influential books, including The Architecture of Country Houses (1850), are rare in Delaware. This frame house was built for Presbyterian minister Thomas B. Bradford and shows the signatures of the style: decorative bargeboards, a wooden porch with Tudor Revival arches, and bay and casement windows. (Smyrna, too, has a similar cottage built for a minister, the Cummins House of 1874–1875 at 107 N. Main St.) Nearly razed at one point, Rose Cottage was bought for a dollar by the Friends of Old Dover and given to the state, which uses it as headquarters for the state museums.