Sharing its block across Jackson Street from the courthouse with St. John's United Methodist Church (1922) by Houston architect C. N. Nelson, the McFarlane House completes a classic small-town urban composition, best contemplated, however, when highway traffic on Jackson Street is light. A late version of a Gulf Coast cottage, the house possesses roof planes of a steeper pitch and more decorative veranda and window frame trim than pre–Civil War versions of this house type. What is striking about the house is its scale: it is like New Orleans in its combination of standard typology, grand scale, and an oversized, front-facing central dormer. The house was built by Thomas Culshaw, an English-born carpenter-architect, for a Scottish immigrant who was a Confederate veteran and Richmond merchant. Given to the City of Richmond by McFarlane descendants in 1978, it now contains the offices of the Fort Bend Museum Association.