The recumbent stone lion guarding the corner of Columbus Avenue and Greenwich Park marks the location of one of the most unusual houses in the South End, a neighborhood where groups of identical row houses were the norm in the late nineteenth century. Described at the time of its construction as in the German Gothic style, the Dr. O. S. Sanders House is brick with Nova Scotia sandstone trim used to highlight fenestration patterns and belt courses. Pointed arched windows predominate and, along with the steep double pitch of the mansard roof, give the house a pronounced vertical character. Giovanni Bettelini carved the sandstone lion at the foot of the steps in the same year the house was built. The nearby Union United Methodist Church (1872, Alexander Estey, 485 Columbus Avenue) provides an appropriate English Gothic Revival counterpoint in Roxbury puddingstone.