The ever-prolific Dimmock here adopts the Beaux-Arts idiom of New York designers, such as McKim, Mead and White, in this sophisticated Renaissance Revival structure. It is a diminutive Italian palazzo, but Dimmock employed a heavy rustication on the piers that recalls H. H. Richardson. Dimmock designed many buildings in Richmond and the surrounding area between the Civil War and his death in 1908. He was born in Portsmouth in 1842 and served in the Confederate army. Nothing is known about his architectural training; his knowledge probably came through the building trade.