Italianate villas like this one typically stood on large grounds on the outskirts of towns. Today it is surrounded by open fields, but Rosedale was once set amid a designed landscape, and 1930s photographs show mature trees in its immediate vicinity. Land speculator and planter W. W. Topp built the house, which resembles Samuel Sloan’s Design VI for “An Italian Villa” in his The Model Architect (vol. 1, 1852). Constructed of stucco-covered brick, Rosedale has a three-story, central entrance tower, round-arched windows, bracketed eaves, a one-story veranda supported by cast-iron columns with foliated cast-iron capitals, a canopy-covered balcony with a cast-iron railing at the central window, and two sets of paired, brick chimneys. The house contains a large collection of furniture by New Orleans artisan John Henry Belter. In town, the residence (c. 1869) at 420 3rd Street S is similar to it but smaller.