[4] The building is three stories tall, with a symmetric facade 200 feet wide, in Beaux Arts style, with a raised basement of limestone and the upper floors clad in red brick.

The central entrance is shaded by a projecting 2-story portico with an entablature supported by four fluted Ionic columns, and the door is flanked on each side by a marble medallion in a fruit-and-vegetable wreath.

Quoins decorate the ends of the front and a limestone cornice trims the top of the wall, which is sheltered by a red tile hip roof with two brick chimneys.

[3] Inside the main entrance, one stair leads down to the basement and a marble staircase curves up to the piano nobile, where a central corridor runs the length of the building, with rooms opening on either side.

Cole aimed to develop scientific rules that could be applied to practical breeding problems, keeping careful records while cross-breeding cattle, hybridizing corn, and improving barley, oats, soybeans and sweet clover.