It is what architectural historians call a Dutch Billy, a term referring to a style of townhouse characterised by a stepped or curved gable facing the street, a form that became fashionable in Dublin during the reign of William III, the Dutch-born king whose name the type informally carries. These houses arrived in Ireland largely through the influence of Huguenot and Dutch merchants who settled in Dublin from the 1680s onwards, bringing with them building fashions from Amsterdam and the Protestant cities of the Netherlands.

According to archaeologists Linzi Simpson and Ed O'Donovan, who assessed the building in November 1997, this particular structure can be dated to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, placing it at the very moment when the Dutch Billy form was taking root in the city. That period was a remarkable one for Dublin's built environment. The city was expanding rapidly, and a new merchant and professional class was reshaping its streetscapes with brick townhouses quite unlike the timber-framed buildings that had preceded them. Most of what was built in that era has since been demolished, altered beyond recognition, or buried beneath later development, which makes a surviving example of this type genuinely unusual. Dublin once had hundreds of Dutch Billy houses; the number that remain largely intact today can be counted in the dozens at most.

Because the site record does not specify a precise address, visiting requires a degree of detective work. The south city area is dense with Georgian and Victorian streetscapes, and Dutch Billy survivals tend to lurk in older lanes and secondary streets rather than on principal thoroughfares. The gabled roofline is the clearest thing to look for, since the stepped or ogee-curved profile sits visibly above the parapet line and distinguishes these houses from the flat-fronted Georgian terraces that replaced them in fashion. Those with a particular interest in the building type would do well to consult the work of the Dublin Civic Trust or architectural conservation records, which have documented a number of survivals across the older quarters of the city.