It is a five-story brick building, built in a conscious imitation of the 1785 home of Woodbury Langdon, a prominent merchant and politician which previously occupied the site.

Its facade presents as two five-bay structures set side-by-side, each with a central entrance sheltered by a projecting rectangular portico.

The building facade incorporates lions, terra cotta sculptures of the Four Seasons of Man, and busts of Langdon and Frank Jones, who built the hotel in 1885.

Frank Jones, a Portsmouth mayor, congressman, and prominent local brewer bought it in 1870, tore it down, and built a Second Empire hotel building on the site.

Both the room's frieze and the mahogany-framed mantelpiece at the east end are ornamented with carved arabesques and festoons in a neo-Adamesque style that evokes the Federal period heritage of the hotel and the city of Portsmouth.