By reintroducing elements traditionally associated with houses – from a gabled roof to an arch-framed entrance – but stripping them of their original functions, he laid the foundations for the entire Postmodern movement.
Italian architect Aldo Rossi credited the building with having "liberated architecture in America and elsewhere", while fellow American architect Peter Eisenman described it as "the first American building to propose an ideological break with Modern abstraction at the same time that it is rooted in this tradition.