This antebellum mansion opposite the Valentine Museum is an early use of the Italianate style in the city of Richmond. The massive scale and square proportions employed here were inspired by the Renaissance palaces of Florence. Notable features of the house include the thin-jointed pressed brick façade, marble entrance steps, elaborately detailed porch, and cast-iron hood moldings over the windows. Dating from 1853, the house was the home of William A. Grant, a tobacco manufacturer whose factory survives in Shockoe Valley. It was sold to the Sheltering Arms Hospital in 1882. The hospital has since moved and the mansion is now owned by the Medical College of Virginia of Virginia Commonwealth University, which has sympathetically restored the first-floor reception rooms. The Grant House and nearby dwellings are part of a progression of distinguished houses that once formed a leading residential neighborhood.