It is a two-story wood-frame structure, built as a single-family residence in a vernacular Victorian style, with a cross-gabled roof on a busy street in a residential neighborhood in an area slightly west of downtown Scranton, looking towards it over the Lackawanna River.

The house has one architecturally noteworthy feature, a glass anteentrance to keep out cold weather, not common at that time.

[4] Since Powderly's death the house has gone through other owners but has not been substantially altered, other than the conversion of the second floor to an apartment and the addition of a picture window to that unit.

Powderly emphasized non-violent means to gain improvements in working conditions and pay, and the union was also socially progressive for the period, admitting both women and African Americans.

In 1886 it effectively collapsed after Powderly refused to support an eight-hour workday, and opposed the more confrontational tactics of one of his ultimately more successful rivals, Samuel Gompers.