The architect has taken the theme of the cruciform Prairie house and has manipulated it into a solid, sculptural form reminiscent of some of the pre-1909 Chicago suburban designs of Walter Burley Griffin. The arrangement of heavy piers, light wood members, and small openings is awkward, but this very quality creates a remarkable interpretation of the Prairie mode. Another nearby version of the Prairie box which is attributed to Broaten is the Fred Lippert house (1914) at 521 North Washington Avenue. An exact copy of this house was built around 1916 at West Bend.