On March 21, 1857, Rush Battles contracted carpenter Erastus Slater to build a house from the plans drawn by William Blackford as used at the Moses Koch house in Erie (demolished). The design is similar to Samuel Sloan's “A Plain and Ornamented Villa” in his folio The Model Architect of 1852. The main portion of the house is a three-by-three-bay rectangle with a pyramidal roof topped with a three-bay cupola. A large rectangular addition at the rear houses the kitchen. The Erie County Historical Society now owns ninety acres of the original farm and re-creates a farm family's life using the Battles family's furnishings and period costumes.
The former house (1861) at 306 Walnut Street, now the Charlotte Elizabeth Battles Memorial Museum, seems to have been built by the same carpenter, as the stairs and moldings are nearly duplicates. It housed members of the Battles family for nearly one hundred years. The red brick Battles Bank (1893; 12–14 Main Street) is a handsome stone-trimmed building in the commercial district.