Dr. W. Calhoun Sterling House

An arch designed by H. H. Richardson that once surrounded Henry Adams's kitchen window has been much narrowed and now outlines the main door at 2618 31st Street; the entrance arch of the Adams house (slightly narrowed) now frames the garage door. These elements were salvaged when the adjoining Hay and Adams houses, built 1884–1885 on Lafayette Square, were demolished in 1927 to make way for the hotel that bears their names. Together these arches were determining factors in the design of Horace Peaslee's picturesque one-and-a-half-story suburban residence, where housing the automobile is at least symbolically more important than providing for humans. His compact, asymmetrical composition is dominated by steep, slate-covered gabled and hip roofs that shelter the light brown stuccoed walls and blend nicely with the intricately carved sandstone of the Richardsonian fragments.