The Coggeshall House is a small, one-and-a-half-story house with a stone central chimney and a gambrel roof. The building originally stood in Westport, Massachusetts and was built c.1710. The Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF) purchased the house in 1977, disassembled it, and relocated it to the William Street site. The house came to NRF with a frame, chimney stone, and interior detail all in good condition and was restored in 1977-78.

Two key elements give visual indication that this little house was not built in the Newport design tradition. The first is the shallower angle of the lower roofs. On Newport gambrels of either one or two stories, the angle of the lower section is almost vertical. The second telling feature is the stone chimney, since most eighteenth-century Newport houses used brick for the chimney.

While it is a bit incongruous to place a rural Massachusetts building in the urban setting of Newport, this was not so unusual to earlier preservationists in the 1960s. The important thing then was to save buildings of architectural importance and interest. Clearly, it was best if a building could be saved on its original site or in the vicinity, but if that failed it was moved. Thus many structures were transplanted to new sites all over New England during this period.