[6] While the French Second Empire style building suggests a stone or stucco exterior, it is actually built with flush horizontal siding and wooden quoins.

[15] By that time, the formerly rural area was "a community thickly populated, with houses and apartments closely spaced.

"[15] An article in 1950 stated the Junior Museum was "filled with boys and girls who have never climbed a tree before", and that weekly attendance was 400-600.

[6] The house was described as "barren and austere"[18] by The Oregonian, which also noted its gas and electric chandeliers, decorative plaster wainscoting on the stairway flights, and inlaid hardwoods, though some rooms had been recovered in asphalt floor tiling.

[6][21][22][23] The mansion was moved approximately 0.5 miles (0.80 km) to 1425 SW 20th Avenue on a 10,000 square feet (930 m2) lot.

[6] Eric Ladd (1921-2000[26]) was called "the idiosyncratic Portlander who was in the forefront of historic preservation" by The Oregonian at his death in 2000.

[23] The Old Portland Colony also contained a replica of Abraham Lincoln's Springfield, Kentucky home, built for the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.

[22] The Lincoln home was opened as a museum and a sandwich shop in about 1956, but had a large fire some time later.

[3][22][27] It also contained "burled ash panelling [sic] from the great hall of the Knapp house", a large Stick-Eastlake style home in Portland's Nob Hill, erected in 1882 and demolished in the 1950s.

The sound of dripping water draws attention to the gigantic parlor living room area.

[32] The home was sold to the Kamm House Partnership (William J. Hawkins III, Ron Emmerson) by 1984.

[24] It is currently home to the Alliance française de Portland,[33] who hosts the annual Bastille Day festival at Director Park.

[34] In their survey of classic Portland homes, Hawkins and Willingham stated the home was Portland's singular remaining great mansion from the decade of the 1870s ... the most proper design in the style.. [it] is handsomely proportioned, clearly imitating stone construction in wood.

[8]Bart King's An Architectural Guidebook to Portland states "A somewhat daunting structure, the Jacob Kamm House may qualify as the city's first real mansion.

It has dramatic quoined corners, arched and elongated windows with keystones, and expressive baroque dormers in the mansard roof.