The wood detailing and perpendicular emphasis of the Richards house places it squarely within the Eastlake style. All of the many gable ends are filled with open medieval timberwork, the best being the high north roof gable, which exhibits a pattern of squared work. The architect has, in a manner particularly typical of the Eastlake style, played with contrasts. The tall, thin verticality of the volumes of the building, the steeply pitched roofs, and the gables are contrasted with the horizontal banding of the building, which starts at the stone raised basement and is repeated in a band of clapboard, a thin curved band of fishscale shingles, and finally the upper surface covered with a different pattern of shingles. Missing from the house now (as is often the case in these buildings) is the delicacy of the metalwork that starts and terminates designs such as this: a cast-iron fence at its base and then a ridgecrest and finials.