A row of well-maintained workers' tenements indicates how handsome early duplex workers' housing can be when left more or less as built (except in this case for such detracting addenda as shutters and ornamented aluminum storm doors). Plain clapboard walls are animated by a syncopated rhythm of well-proportioned openings on the ground story common to this type—window/window/tall door (emphasized by a projecting molding cap)/paired window (one half shared with the adjoining tenant)—which then repeats in an inverted sequence. Above, the wall is absolutely plain, except for the punctuation of paired low bathroom windows at the center of the entablature which echo the doubled window below. All other light for upstairs rooms comes from windows in side elevations. The austerity of treatment and even basic molding shapes suggest the Greek Revival, but so nominally that the ground is prepared for early Victorian forms to take over. This housing seems to have been built when John Ross built Oakland's first mill.