This house was likely built for early Stannard settler Arthur Blair or one of his sons and is a well-preserved example of two early Vermont vernacular features: plank-wall construction and a cross-passage plan. Plank-wall framing was common in northeastern Vermont during the first half of the nineteenth century. The house's well-executed exterior is constructed of four-inch planks, double-tenoned to each other, top and bottom, and let into the sill and plate to provide strong and tight walls. A large central chimney originally heated the house. The room arrangement does not follow the Cape standard of a central entrance opening into a small porch leading to a room on either side. Instead, the original entrance is located to one side of a large central room oriented to the hearth with small side rooms on either side. The passage of movement from entrance directly to the back of the house on one side of the chimney gives the cross-passage house its name. The form was common in rural parts of the British Isles, particularly Scotland, where many settlers of Caledonia County originated, and in Massachusetts and adjacent states during the eighteenth century. Most Vermont cross-passage houses are found in the northeastern portion of the state, but isolated examples in Chittenden and Rutland counties indicate that it was a form familiar to many early builders and many more cross-passages may hide behind remodeled symmetrical facades.