Although by 1895 he was beginning to gain a reputation among an elite clientele as an interior designer, this was Ogden Codman's first commission for a complete residential design. Its arrangement is relatively simple, with a central gabled pavilion projecting from the hip-roofed main block of the two-and-one-half-story house. Dormers, pedimented gable, dentil cornice trim and arched-topped windows on the first story suggest Codman's Federal-period inspirations. The design, with its original stucco covering, seemed so tentative and rustic that it led his famous friend and collaborator Edith Wharton to remark caustically that one of the worst plights was to “build a mud hut and mistake it for the Parthenon.”