George Loring built for himself a house unlike the popular Queen Anne and Colonial Revival homes his firm designed in Somerville and other Boston suburbs. Loring crafted a free interpretation of seventeenth-century medieval architecture with its brick first story and wooden story-and-a-half overhang sheathed in wood shingles. Imitation handmade bricks and oriel windows with diamond-pane casements are the only concession to architectural ornament. Loring trained in the office of Boston City Architect George A. Clough before establishing his own practice in 1883. By 1895, when he constructed this residence on Highland Avenue, Loring was in partnership with Sanford Phipps, specializing in the design of large single-family homes in the Boston metropolitan area. Loring and Phipps was the preeminent architectural firm in Somerville at the turn of the century.