Architecturally, it is a typical example of a house illustrating Colonial Revival influence so popular in the design of southern antebellum dwellings and in American houses in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century America. The estate on which the house stands was purchased by Martha Berry's father, Thomas Berry, in 1871. The Berry family moved to Rome in 1866 but first lived in downtown Rome. Thomas Berry started a prosperous merchantile and cotton-factoring business which resulted in his ability to purchase the Oak Hill property in 1871.
Research is inconclusive as to what the house actually looked like when the family moved into it.
Family photograph albums portray a house of Victorian architecture until around the turn of the twentieth century when a similar variation of Oak Hill's present-day stature appears. The home partially burned from a fire in 1844, which may explain the discrepancies in its initial and later appearance. While the estate is where Martha Berry, her siblings, and three adopted cousins, grew into adulthood, the home is best understood as one that she transformed, in 1927, upon gaining ownership of it. The present room arrangement and the installation of modern facilities were accomplished between 1927 and 1932, when the interior of the house was remodeled. Family pieces and other accouterments and ephemera represent Martha Berry's appreciation of southern heritage and personal ideologies.