The main house stands on the edge of a hill, with the land sloping down on the north, east and south sides to tributaries of Mill Creek.

[3] This was one of his most exuberant and freewheeling suburban houses, featuring a stone water tower with Juliet balconies, his trademark "upside-down" brick chimneys, roofs with jerkin head gables, dormers topped with gabled, hipped, shed (and even one tall, pyramidical) roofs, a great bay window thrusting out at the top of the stairs, and a Japanese tea room appended to the wrap-around porch.

Architectural historian James F. O'Gorman described the exterior as "a plastic chorus of towers, bays, sheds, gables, and chimneys.

The hall's walls and ceiling were paneled in dark, mahogany coffering, with a narrow, latticed stair in the center of the room rising steeply like a ship's gangway.

Architectural historian Michael J. Lewis sees the influence of the German Gothic Revival's "love of picturesque vagaries and eccentricity" in Dolobran.

Rather than the "disciplined picturesque[ness]" of H. H. Richardson, Stanford White or Bruce Price, who "sought to impose classical values of calm and repose on plans that were rather irregular," Furness embraced a "restlessness and turbulence" in his complex and sometimes unorthodox massing of volumes.

[7] The circa-1888 expansion of the house was more restrained, and included the three-story east addition – with pyramidical roof and stone chimneys – the octagonal study, and the verandah with its graceful, arching brackets.

The circa-1888 alterations probably included the front bedroom's buff-colored, terra-cotta fireplace and mantel, the detailing of which is closely related to the reading room of Furness's contemporaneous University of Pennsylvania Library (1888–91).

The vast two-story space – 40 by 50 feet (12.2 x 15.2 m) – is illuminated by two long strips of skylights, flanking the terrace above, and large windows at the room's east end where the hill drops away.

– The country-seat of Clement A. Griscom, Esq., is a about half a mile northeast from Haverford Station, Pennsylvania Railroad, and comprises somewhat more than eighty acres, of a rolling, uneven nature, the larger portion of the land sloping generally toward the northward, and eastward to a stream of water which flows through the tract in an easterly direction.

The southwestern portion is gently rolling, and has been appropriated for a lawn, through which the carriage road winds to the residence past beds of beautiful variegated plants and flowers, clumps of evergreens, etc.

From the porch of the house one might imagine that the residence was the only building on the property, so thoroughly do the near-by tree growths hide the usual buildings of a country place, but it is only a walk of a minute or two through the trees to a finely-appointed stable, in which is kept a number of blooded horses for riding and driving, and not far off is a large greenhouse for the growth of many kinds of flowers, and hotbeds for early vegetable delicacies for the table.

[26] The mansion was bought by Dolobran Estate LLC privately for an undisclosed amount on November 16, 2012 (listed as one dollar on property records).