What makes the Simon house unusual?

From the text:

"At the end of the road was a two-storied white house with porches circling it upstairs and downstairs. In his old age, our ancestor Simon Finch had built it to please his nagging wife; but with the porches all resemblance to ordinary houses of its era ended. The internal arrangements of the Finch house were indicative of Simon's guilelessness and the absolute trust with which he regarded his offspring.

There were six bedrooms upstairs, four for the eight female children, one for

Welcome Finch, the sole son, and one for visiting relatives. Simple enough; but

the daughters' rooms could be reached only by one staircase, Welcome's room

and the guestroom only by another. The Daughters' Staircase was in the ground- floor bedroom of their parents, so Simon always knew the hours of his daughters' nocturnal comings and goings.

There was a kitchen separate from the rest of the house, tacked onto it by a

wooden catwalk; in the back yard was a rusty bell on a pole, used to summon

field hands or as a distress signal; a widow's walk was on the roof, but no widows walked there — from it, Simon oversaw his overseer, watched the river-boats, and gazed into the lives of surrounding landholders."