The house is a 1½ story frame cottage with intersecting gable roofs, dormers, a bay window, and a shallow front porch.

Gothic Revival details are found in the second-story windows, the steeply pitched roof lines, and the gabled wall dormers.

[2] The owner of the house, Jonathan Taylor Grimes, was an early settler in the Edina area and a pioneer horticulturist.

In 1859, Grimes and a partner, William Rheem, purchased 160 acres (65 ha) in the southwest corner of what was then Richfield Township.

Grimes later obtained a quit claim deed to 160 acres (65 ha) north and east of the mill, where he built the house in 1869.