[1] The house is located in a residential area northwest of downtown Bangor, on the northeast side of Court Street opposite Boynton Street, and next door to the historic Samuel Farrar House.

It is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-framed structure, with a flared mansard roof, and a flushboarded exterior that has been scored and treated to resemble stone.

The entrance is sheltered by an ornately decorated porch with square posts and a bracketed and dentillated cornice.

[2] It was built in 1858 for William Blake, a wealthy Bangor merchant, by his brother-in-law, Boston architect Calvin Ryder.

It is probably one of the first buildings of the Second Empire style built in the state, and typifies the high-style houses built for Bangor's elite in the years before the American Civil War.