Conceived as part of the Visitor Center complex, the Motor House was distinct in character from accommodations at the Williamsburg Inn and Williamsburg Lodge. While the prewar hotels emphasized old-fashioned comfort and relaxation, here even the name connoted rapid modern travel. Approached by car from the north, it has the appearance of a conventional motel, distinguished only by careful brickwork with eighteenth-century overtones and modernist gables reminiscent of Charles M. Goodman's work in the 1950s. A staggered site pattern created open-fronted courtyards and reduced the apparent scale of the complex. On the rear, large-mullioned windows looked onto wooded land and gave the rooms a modern residential quality. Rooms were originally furnished with Eero Saarinen furniture and Ansel Adams photographs.

Buildings added in the 1960s were conceived as a series of flat-roofed pavilions with doubleloaded corridors on two floors. Richmond architect David Warren Hardwicke used gray wood siding applied vertically in a manner that allowed the walls to push out at the window bays, creating a columnar effect that stands comfortably in a mature pine grove. A portion of the 1956 woodlands is scheduled to be replaced by a multistory addition designed by Carlton Abbott.