"Occupying the crest of a hill on a site that once held a large house, the building shelters an academy while projecting a character that lies between house and institution, classical repose and romantic eccentricity, formal precision and indeterminacy, urbane assurance and rusticity, and even exhibiting a touch of rudeness. The overall building form, pyramidal in silhouette and ragged where it meets the earth, helps to complete the hill. The building is at once modern -- no one could mistake it for a contemporary of the neighboring nineteenth-century homes -- and resonant with reminders of building traditions. A studious observer may find traces of Victorian country homes, the English Arts and Crafts movement, Greene and Greene, the Viennese Secessionists and Frank Lloyd Wright. A casual wanderer through the bucolic grounds of the Academy may simply enjoy a sense of familiarity with the place, appreciating the accommodation between building and site."

—Alex Krieger, ed. The Architecture of Kallman McKinnell & Wood. p52.