Number 10 Exchange Street Upper is identified as a Dutch Billy, a house type so thoroughly swept away by later centuries of development and decay that its survival here, even in altered condition, makes it something of an anomaly.

The Dutch Billy is a vernacular urban house form characterised by a curved or stepped gable facing the street, a style that arrived in Ireland from the Low Countries during the late seventeenth century. It became the dominant form for merchant and tradesman housing in Dublin during that period, lining the streets of what was then a rapidly expanding and prosperous city. By the Victorian era and well into the twentieth century, most had been demolished, refronted, or simply collapsed. Archaeologists and architectural historians Linzi Simpson and Ed O'Donovan noted in November 1997 that No. 10 Exchange Street Upper is of this type, with origins potentially reaching back to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, though the precise date remains uncertain. That ambiguity is itself telling: the building has been altered enough over time that pinning it down is difficult, yet the underlying form persists.

Exchange Street Upper is a brief and easily overlooked stretch in the Liberties and Wood Quay area, close to the river and the oldest layers of the city. The street does not announce itself, and the building in question is not marked or interpreted for visitors. Those with an interest in early Dublin streetscapes would do well to simply walk the area slowly and look up, paying attention to rooflines and gable profiles rather than shopfronts. The surrounding streets retain fragments of the medieval and early modern city in unexpected places, and No. 10 rewards the kind of attention usually reserved for more formally recognised heritage sites.