Erected in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the John Lewden House was originally built as a two-story, brick, center hall, one-room plan plantation house. The facade is characterized by a five-bay, center-door fenestration and brick walls laid in plain Flemish bond resting on a single course molded brick stretcher water table and three course common bond foundation. The first floor windows have been restored with twelve-over-twelve pane, double hung sash windows with solid raised panel wooden shutters and wrought iron shutter dogs finished with scrolled terminals. On the second floor the windows are twelve-over-eight pane sash with louvered shutters. The first floor openings are supported by the pegged mortise and tanoned window frames, while the second level windows are capped with plain white-washed beam lintels. The central element in the facade is the doorway entering into the central passage. Composed of raised panels on the exterior and vertical board battone on the interior, the door is accented on the exterior by a classical surround defined by two Roman Doric colomns with exaggerated entasis amd resting on squared and offset granite pliaths. The columns, in turn, carry a full emtablature with an archatrive finished with five symetically placed blocks of guttae, a frieze infilled with five triglyphs above the guttae and a cornice with a Wall of Troy molding below the fascia. The entire entablature is covered with a shallow shed roof. Although the principal facade expresses the Georigian values of tripartite bilaterial fenestration, the overall effect in the Lewden House is skewed by the nonsymetrical relational placement of the openings.
Late-nineteenth century photographs of the Lewden House illustrate the former presence of a two-bay gable wing. A family inventory from 1841 describes the wing as a store containing such goods as farming implements and agricultural produce. When the wing was demolished in the twenthieth century, the original gable end wall was finished with studs and sheathed with Colonial-revival beaded-edge weatherboard.
On the interior, the Lewden House retains much of its original woodwork in the parlor and hall. The parlor visually focuses on the projecting interior galbe and chimney pile elaborately painted with a crossetted architrave surrounded by a broken cornice entabulature supported at either end by a single pulvinated block and containing in the freize a raised central block. Above the mantle shelf is a single-panel overmantel with crossetted and molded exterior surround and rectangular interior surround. The entire room possesses a heavy wooden cornice finished with a Wall of Troy molding identical to that found on the exterior door surround mantle shelf. Adjacent to the hearth is an architectural cupboard consisting of two sets of raised-panel doors on HL hinges. The shelves in the upper portion of the cupboard display butterfly-edged profiles with central projecting display areas. The remaining three walls in the room retain a plain raised-panel dado over an unelaborated baseboard.
The central hall, somewhat modified during restoration in the 1930's and 1940's, contains an open-string stair leading in a straight run to an intermediate landing. Each tread contains two heavy turned balusters and sawn-work spandrals. The newel post exhibits the same use of Roman Doric order as found in the columns making the exterior doorway. Below the stair string is a single, large, raised panel circumscribed by receding plains of variously molded profiles. Directly under the landing stands a raised four-panel door opening down into a fully excavated granite-walled cellar. The whole of the stair passage is further finished with a molded wooden chair rail containing up the stairs and paralleling the sweep of the stair rail.
The present-day dining room was significantly altered during the demolition of the store wing and subsequent restoration. Of note, however, are the fine federal-revival mantel complete with flattended, engaged and reeded pilasters and a plain entablature and a heavy wooden cornice with the same Wall of Troy molding reflected elsewhere in the house.
In addition to the gable and store wing, the Lewden House received a series of els off the rear facade. Erected in brick laid in common bond and local granite these aglutinations have been repeatedly modified through the needs of suceeding occupant generations.
Adjacent to the dwelling property is a ca. 1800 brick and stone barn which has been altered to a three-car garage with an overhead apartment. The original fabric of the barn suggests the use of the gorund level as a carriage house and stable and the second floor and loft as a continuaton back room and granary. The gable end rear walls of the barn were laid in mixed common bond and the gables fenestrated with single-brick lozenge ventilators. Immediately behind the house are a modern swimming pool and pool house.