Dixon was set amidst a flat landscape of farmland in King & Queen County that had remained nearly unchanged for over two hundred years. Located on the east side of the Mattaponi River, the house and setting evoked an era when poor overland travel routes made waterways the only reliable means of transportation in Virginia. The residence was a classic Virginia frame, five-bay, symmetrical dwelling with a central hall flanked by single rooms on each floor. It was built in 1793, after Richard Dixon, in 1790, purchased the property on which an earlier house stood. The house was the only surviving historic building on this former plantation that records indicate once had a detached kitchen, dairy, smokehouse, barn, wharf, and cemetery. The restored 1793 house design featured end walls of Flemish-bond brick with interior chimneys, a gambrel roof, and original interior woodwork, including a paneled fireplace wall in the parlor. In the 1950s, one-room, two-story wings were built on either end and were connected by curved hyphens with a simple blind colonnade.  A fire in the spring of 2021 completely destroyed Dixon.