Built in 1849, it is an important early example of Gothic Revival Architecture, whose design was published by Andrew Jackson Downing in 1850 and received wide notice.

[2] The house was built in 1849 for Henry Hill Boody, Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Bowdoin College in Brunswick from 1845 to 1854.

It then passed through several hands before being purchased by Bowdoin Professor Henry Johnson in 1877.

[4] The house was designed in 1848 by Gervase Wheeler, an English architect whose work reflected a growing architectural aesthetic to externalize aspects of a building's construction, exemplified here by the use of vertical board-and-batten siding.

The house is also regarded as an important precursor of the Stick style, which followed the Gothic Revival.