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A vegetarian, he crusaded for animal rights, and he proselytized against child labor. He formed a partnership with the publishing house Fowler & Wells, which published Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. It is also the plainest, with dentils along the cornice providing the only ornamentation on the plastered limestone walls. Inside, the two-story house has four large rooms on each floor, plus smaller triangular rooms, shaped by the octagon’s contours. The most conventional form of an octagon house is simply a structure of eight equal exterior walls. This format allows architects to stack multiple levels on top of one another with ease.
Longfellow-Hastings Octagon House
It has a place of remembrance as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. A unique style for the West Coast, the Shaw House is a Second Empire home with a French mansard roof. Although the house had been on the market for a while, so many curiosity seekers had asked to tour it that the listing agent had stopped returning calls, she said.
History
Fowler also believed octagon houses promoted an “interchange of friendly and benevolent feeling.” That was true especially for octagonal schools and churches. And as for barns — wedge-shaped stalls were ideal for horses, narrower in the rear than in the front. The open central space allowed a big storage area for hay and farm equipment. Early-era Topsider Homes were all octagonal shaped and built on pedestal foundations. For this foundation type, the structural characteristics of an 8-sided design were superior and far more efficient to build than square or round house geometry. That same 8-sided geometry was found to have other benefits for building on stilts, pilings and even on traditional foundations.
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Classic Daytime Cemetery Tour
Because round houses were expensive to build, Mr. Fowler settled on the octagon as the next best thing. With windows on all sides, octagonal homes had more light and better airflow, so they were healthier to live in, he claimed, and they made better use of space. “All the rooms are united, so that you could go from one to another, without being obliged to pass through a cold and cheerless entry,” he wrote. If you were a forward-thinking individualist in 1800s America, building an eight-sided abode was a great way to show it. The octagon house was a cutting-edge design at the time, believed to be a more efficient use of space, energy, and cost than the conventional square. The style became popular in the United States and Canada following the publication of Orson Squire Fowler's 1848 book The Octagon House, A Home for All.
Pros and Cons of an Octagon House
The home is particularly interesting because of its inhabitant – John J. Ford, a well-known wood carver. Ford's works include carvings for the California State Capitol, the Iolani Palace in Hawaii, and Leland Stanford's private railroad car. Because of his occupation, the exterior and interior carvings were all done by hand in ornate, one-of-a-kind patterns. This 1855 house is on 80 acres straddling a state highway in Delaware County, N.Y. It is being sold as part of Octagon Farm, a complex of buildings that includes a barn, outbuildings and a former cidery with a large owner’s apartment.
Built in 1861
To Fowler, a fine and elegant house signified — and yet was also, somehow, the cause of — the fineness and elegance of its tenants. Fowler, his brother Lorenzo and Lorenzo’s wife, Lydia Folger Fowler, lectured often on phrenology, popularizing the pseudo-science in the United States. Before the Civil War, phrenology was used to justify slavery because it taught the inferiority of black people based on the shape of their heads. Fowler practiced phrenology, a pseudoscience popular in the first half of the 19th century. He believed you could tell a person’s character and intelligence from the shape and size of his cranium. He wrote and lectured widely on the topic, as well as on temperance, health, education and women’s suffrage.
McElroy Octagon House
The combination of these design and construction principles has created homes that are 'structural battleships' able to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes. Octagonal homes (8-sided) first became popular in the United States in the late 19th century, but their recorded history dates back literally thousands of years. Throughout time, the octagon shape has been a symbolic architectural theme representing regeneration, rebirth and renewal.
In the ensuing decades, many octagonal houses were allowed to fall into disrepair and torn down, including Mr. Fowler’s own 60-room home in Fishkill, N.Y., on the Hudson River. Some became schools or public buildings; others were renovated or expanded, altering their geometry. Because many octagonal homes have central staircases that open to the roof, they tend to enjoy good ventilation, making them easier to cool. But that can also be true of more conventionally shaped houses with roof access, Mr. Lombardi noted.
Together with her husband, she has been spending the last several years lovingly renovating her grandparent's former home, making it their own and learning a lot about life along the way. This central area boasts a high ceiling and plenty of entertainment opportunities. While it lacks the former model’s conversation pit, it makes up for it with a fireplace on the western wall.
Inhabiting a complete aesthetic vision is one of the pleasures of encountering any successful work of art, and the feeling is enhanced when that art is something you can physically occupy. He assembled a full set of long-discontinued Roman Medallion silverware, shored up the house’s dome (then collapsing in slo-mo) and embarked on a forensic analysis of paint layers to ensure that modern swatches matched post-Civil War hues. Gnarled roots in the garden were studied to establish the species and placement of vanished trees. Missing roof pieces were sourced from slate quarries and installed in their original pattern. The museum collection contains portraits, ceramics, pewter and needlework samplers, as well as an exhibit of historical documents relevant to the founding of the United States. The Salt Box was one of the last homes on Bunker Hill, and one of the first moved to the Heritage Square Museum grounds.
Adding a conservatory off to one side of an octagon house allows owners to install an all-glass wall. This not only beautifies the home but allows plants to grow within your walls as well. Despite its predetermined shape, Octagon Houses can serve various functions depending on a family’s needs.
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