Built in 1865 for a ship's captain from a prominent local family, it is one of Waldo County's finest examples of Italianate architecture, with a particularly elaborate cupola.

[2] It is a roughly cubic wood-frame structure, capped by a hip roof with deep eaves that are decorated with dentil moulding and paired brackets.

The front facade is three bays wide, with an early 20th-century Colonial Revival portico sheltering its main entrance.

[3] The house was built in 1865 for John P. Nichols, one of Searsport's most successful ship captains of the period.

A later resident of this house, Carleton Bryant, was an admiral of the United States Navy during World War II.