With an estimated construction date of 1756, the house was one of Sterling's oldest surviving structures, before it was destroyed by an arsonist in 2007.

The Sawyer Homestead is located in rural eastern Sterling, at the junction of Maple Street and Rugg Road.

It is a 1+1⁄2-story Cape style wood-frame structure, four bays wide, with an off-center interior chimney, clapboard siding, and a stone foundation.

The property included, prior to the rebuilding effort, an early 20th-century Federal Revival outbuilding, and a barn was located across Rugg Road.

The traditional historical claim is that the core of the house was built in 1756 by Ezra Sawyer, Jr., who died while serving in the American Revolutionary War.