Raymond Viner Hall studied the works and writings of John Ruskin, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright while apprenticed to his father, a master builder. He characterized his education in the local public schools and through apprenticeships as containing “both the poetic and prosaic.” He lived in Port Allegany in neighboring McKean County. To reach his far-flung commissions in Pennsylvania, New York, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Hall invested in an airplane. His portfolio states that he favored the use of “advanced applications of concrete, masonry, steel, wood and pipe in integrated systems aiming at sound construction at lower than normal costs.”

This house, commissioned by the local doctor, was executed early in Hall's career, and employs, on a domestic scale, the same elements he used later to design his larger schools (
CM5). The low-slung, flat-roofed structure hugs the ground, emphasizes privacy from the street with its solid cement wall, and opens with large windows at the rear. The facade wall is punctuated by light yellow brick pylons at the entrance and a whitewashed and pierced decorative cement band forming a clerestory to light the interior.