Hunt was one of many American architects influenced by a mid-19th-century European revival of late-medieval rustic country architecture, most notably the gingerbread-ornamented chalets of the Alps and the half-timbered cottages of Normandy and Tudor England.

The asymmetrical composition of the Eastern Stick style is highlighted by functional-appearing decorative "stick work."

Features:

• The stick work symbolized the structural skeleton
  
• Purely decorative criss-cross timbers, or stickwork
  
• Wood construction
  
• Angularity, verticality, and asymmetry
  
• Steeply pitched gable roof, cross gables
  
• Projecting gables
  
• Towers
  
• Pointed dormers
  
• Large verandahs and porches, often decorated with simple diagonal braces
  
• Oversized and unornamented structural corner posts, roof rafters, purlins, brackets, porch posts, and railings
  
• Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal boards applied over horizontal clapboards most often found on gable ends and upper stories
  
• Sometimes diagonal boards were incorporated to resemble half-timbering
  
• Ornamental bracketing and bargeboards
  
• Overhanging eaves
  
• Bright, contrasting paint colors
  
• Colored shingles

In the late Victorian period multi-color schemes were adopted. While traditional earth tones were still acceptable, astonishing colors and contrasts also began to appear. Lighter detail or trim against a darker house body became the norm. An 1885 Sherwin Williams Company book, What Color?, also said that the projecting parts of a house should be highlighted in a lighter color than that which was used to paint the sunken or receeding parts. But even when the opposite approach was taken (darking the trim against a lighter house body), color was to enhance "the salient features," such as the diagonal bracing on a Stick style design.

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