The Dana House consists of three roughly rectangular painted brick sections, stories in height, with a low-pitch hip roof. The main block, apparently adapted from a stock pattern by New Haven architect
Henry Austin, has a three-bay front facade, with a single-story porch extending across its width, supported by turned posts. The building's roof has typical Italianate wide eaves, with a wooden soffit and corbelled brickwork arches underneath. A square cupola rises above the main block. Additions on 1896 and 1905 extended the house to the north and east, stylistically sympathetic to the main block. The interior has retained much of its original handiwork. It was renovated by the university in 1996 and in 2024. James Dwight Dana's education in geology, in addition to his studies with Professor Silliman, extended to the four-year
United States Exploring Expedition (1838–42), in which Dana served as the staff geologist and mineralogist, and exposed him to a wide-ranging variety of geological formations and minerals. In addition to numerous reports and articles on the material from this expedition, Dana in 1862 produced the
Manual of Geology, the first major work to describe the study of geology as an investigation of the processes that produced the landforms and minerals we see. More than just describing how individual types of rocks and minerals forms, he expanded the view to include descriptions of how major landforms such as mountains and valleys formed. ==See also==