Illustrated Architecture Dictionary
Octagon House
A Victorian house having eight sides; esp. found in the Hudson Valley of New York
Excerpts from The Octagon house is easily recognized by the eight-sided shape of the exterior walls. Occasional examples show six-, ten-, twelve-, or sixteen-sided forms; a few are round. This is a very rare style; probably only a few thousand were originally built, mostly in New York, Massachusetts, and the Midwest. Several hundred of these survive; most were built in the decades of the 1850s and '60s. The style owed its popularity to Orson S. Fowler (1809-1887), a lecturer and writer from Fishkill, New York, who in 1849 published an elaborate defense of its virtues entitled The Octagon House, A Home for All. Following Fowler, at least seven other pattern books of the 18 50s also illustrated Octagon houses. Fowler stressed that an octagon encloses more floor space per linear foot of exterior
wall than does the usual square or rectangle, thereby "reducing both building
costs and heat loss through the walls." He also maintained that Octagons were
superior to square houses in "increasing sunlight and ventilation" and
in "eliminating dark and useless corners." However, he conveniently ignored
interior room shapes, which were not octagonal and therefore still had "useless"
corners, including triangular spaces not found in conventional shapes. Furthermore,
much of this "increased sunlight and ventilation" went into pantries and
closets; most rooms, in fact, have only a single exposure rather than the two commonly
found in conventional houses. Such practical problems are undoubtedly responsible
for the only modest success of the Octagon movement. Fowler claimed his do mestic use of the Octagon to be original but there were scattered earlier examples including Thomas Jefferson's summer house, Poplar Forest, completed in 1819. Octagonal wings and projections were also common in Adam houses (1780-1820). |
An Excerpt from Orson S. Fowler, a native ol the Genesee Country
village of Cohocton, left his father's farm to study for the ministry at Amherst
College. While at Amherst his interest switched to phrenology - thats cience which
maintains that character and mental capacity can be analyzed by examination of the
conformation of a subject's skull. With his brother and sister, Fowler published
tracts extolling phrenology and clairvoyance and a diet of vegetables while warning
against coffee, tea, spirits, and tightly laced dresses. "Why," asked Orson Fowler," so little progress in architecture
when there is so much in other matters! Why continue to build in the same square
form of all past ages?" The Gothic Revival
and the Italianate expressions
had not been lost upon Orson Fowler. From the Italianate he borrowed the cupolas
which lighted his stairwells, the bracketed roofs, and the verandas. From the Gothic came the pointed
arch windows and other embellishments in the octagon house he built for himself on
a rise overlooking the HudsonRiver. From various sources, including his own innovative imagination, came indoor water closets,s peaking tubes, dumb waiters, hot air furnaces, hotwater heaters, and ventilators. The moment of The Home For All was brief, although the novelty of theeight-sided building has never lost its appeal to those individuals looking for something out of the ordinary. |
Features:
- Two-story (some three-story)
- Low-pitched hipped roofs
- Wide eave overhangs
- Eave brackets are common
- Raised basement
- Encircling verandah or porch
- Octagonal cupola, belvedere or roof deck
- Many show Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, or Italianate decorative details; others lack detailing
- Minimal ornamental detailings
Examples from Buffalo architecture:
- Illustration above: Octagon House, Akron, NY
Other examples: