Blanche Harding Sewall, wife of wholesale grocer Cleveland Sewall, drafted two sets of plans for her house: one a Venetian tower house, the other a rambling Spanish-style house. She took these drawings to Ralph Adams Cram in Boston, and he developed the Spanish alternative to produce this stucco-surfaced, tile-roofed country house, one of his major houses of the 1920s. The house was restored in 1979 by Charles Tapley Associates for Sally and Nathan Avery, who rescued it from dereliction. A rear guest house was added in 1996. Associated gardens are by Houston landscape architects Slaney Santana.