Wakehurst, which simulates an English Tudor manor house in its elevation and detailing, was built under the supervision of Dudley Newton from designs purchased by J. J. Van Alen from the British architect C. E. Kempe. Set back from the street and screened by a stand of trees, the horizontal mass of the house is treated sculpturally as a set of two-and-one-half-story staggered blocks, each of which terminates in a gabled end or dormer. Although the composition is remarkably restrained in its carved decoration, each elevation displays a lively sense of modeling, from the recurrent grid of window sets to the finials tracing the zigzag roofline. The central entrance leads to a wood-paneled hall running across the entry axis with the main staircase set before the visitor in keeping with English antecedents.