The purest example of the Queen Anne style on Capitol Hill is this early house by Clarke, whose later work was primarily in the Georgian Revival style. After three years of training with Alfred B. Mullett, Clarke opened his own Washington office in 1886. For this house he employed a common 1880s formula for brick houses, a square projecting bay rising from the basement to a gabled roofline to become the major focus of the facade. However, Clarke's adept handling of the surface details, as well as his sure sense of comfortable proportional relationships between the walls and windows, resulted in a thoroughly satisfying textured Queen Anne facade. Horizontal corbeled brick rows and molded terracotta bands of ornament occur at all structurally and visually significant levels, bringing coherence and control to the whole through simple linear patterns. The building's actual sculptural qualities interact with the implied surface layering created by this linear system to create a complex and sophisticated composition.