The impressive two-story store, with a prominent belt course and segmental arches over the doors and windows, is the only remaining element of successful merchant Richard Ambler's residential and commercial complex, begun about 1721. Ambler was customs collector, and the store has long been identified as the customhouse. It has the form of a conventional early Virginia store, with an unheated public room in front of a heated office. Emma Chenoweth led the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in restoring the building in 1929–1930 according to plans by Richmond architect W. Duncan Lee.