It is a three-story brick building, three bays wide, with a side gable roof whose end wall sections are raised.

Restored with funding from local preservationists, it opened as a museum to Eugene Field later that year.

Field's legal work set the stage for Scott's final appeal to the United States Supreme Court, which was rejected in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney issued a decision denying African Americans United States citizenship.

[3] A plaque on the home was dedicated in 1902 with the help of author Mark Twain, who announced it as the birthplace of Eugene Field.

Twain brushed the fact aside, telling him, "Officially and for the purposes of the future, your brother was born here."