(Continued Syndication of Octagonal Homes Study)--Photo of the Longfellow House courtesy of Heritage Square Museum, Los Angeles, CA

One of Orson Fowler’s occupations was as a writer, and he made significant money from publishing, with his brother-in-law, his many advanced ideas. He was the country’s leading practician of phrenology, a ‘science’ which swept the nation as a method of discerning propensities and characteristics of a person by the shape of their skull. His lifelong practice of typecasting people as this or that personality type based on their head shape may have supported his idea that “a noble man makes a noble home, a mean man, a mean one".
He was a detractor of corsets worn by women and the use of caffeine and other stimulants, and he was a fierce supporter of temperance and vegetarianism. These ideas of proper living, well ahead of their time, are indicative of the free-thinking creativeness that led him to decide to build a house so singular that after its failure it came to be derided as Fowler’s Folly. His creativity and social consciousness aside, however, in exploring Fowler as a sophisticated, educated and forward-thinking scientist and individualist, we mustn’t forget that he was subject to the prejudices of his time. He assumes without reservation that various ethnicities will erect various quality dwellings “corresponding with the order of their mentality.” He goes on to describe the value of gravel wall octagons due partly to the reasonable cost of “7 days’ work of Irishmen” as if cheap labor and Irish immigrants were always synonymous.
It was a quality of the romantic era in which Fowler came of age to be “tempted by the poetic freedom of (Alexander Jackson) Davis and his peers”. If the Romantic Attitude was, as Wayne Andrews writes, “one of comfort, in an era of intellectual inventiveness, not just moonlight and ruins”, then Fowler was certainly using Romantic-era principles to build his ideal dwelling. The comfort of the family, living in a wholesome rural environment in their very own home, was the dream he was trying to establish for all Americans with Home for All. Fowler was an acquaintance of various proponents of the reform movement like Horace Mann, and as a reformist and social thinker he presented the Gravel Wall Octagon house as his altruistic offering for society’s woes. The detailed building instructions, the mathematical justifications for this mode, and the promotion of various conveniences and gadgetry in the book illustrate the effect of the 19th century Romantic age on Fowler and his ideas.
Although any dwelling with eight equal sides and a roof can be called an octagonal home, the type espoused in his book had certain superior qualities which are illustrated in his own home in Fishkill, NY, in the Hudson River Valley. It must have concrete walls (“Gravel Wall”, as he called this construction method), a central stairwell with a glassed- in cupola for lighting it, a dug-out basement as the first floor, not entirely underground, and the main entrance from this basement, the “Work” floor (to prevent the living spaces on the subsequent floor from losing heat each time the front door opens in the winter. Saving money on heating and lighting fuel is a goal stated repeatedly in his writing).
This building mode allows for the following advantages according to the author:

The almost-round shape encloses 20% more livable square footage with the same cost of wall building. This will make it easier for persons of modest means to own a home large enough for their whole family

Any specific number of windows will light the entire space more efficiently than if they were placed in a square or rectangular house (because there are no dark corners)
The central stair and lack of cornering make walking around easier and of fewer steps
The central heater efficiently heats all rooms equally and saves money on fuel
The concrete can easily be poured around a large-bore dowel to create a “speaking tube” to be used between floors
The central stairwell acts like a chimney, sucking cool air through all the floors when windows are open on all floors
The walls were sturdy, long-lasting, and impervious to damp (this was later discredited by the disastrous failure of his concrete cesspool)
Gravel walls are fireproof
the material is free and readily available on the land you are building on, except for the possible expense for the lime component
easy to make yourself, democratic, no experts needed
It is filled with innovative and modern conveniences appropriate to an increasingly sophisticated American hungry for new inventions and industrial conveniences. (These included hot running water, speaking tubes from one floor to another, a dumb-waiter, a furnace replacing all fireplaces, and a convex roof with a collector for rainwater, so the house can have its own water supply)
Verandas all around make it easy to choose a temperature-appropriate place to pass the time: inhabitants can just follow the shade or breeze as they see fit.....

(continuing in Feb. 2010)

Octagonal Houses of the 1850's Still Hanging in There

Congratulations to Heritage Square Museum of Highland Park for the long-awaited re-construction of the Longfellow House veranda. The Longfellow is a California state treasure that we are lucky to have here in Los Angeles: there are few octagonal homes remaining in the nation, and the trend was even more rare here in the west. In this blog I will syndicate my more serious scholarly work, beginning with my 2007 study of octagonal American homes of the 19th century.

The Octagon Home, a Product of the 19th Century Romantic Age of Architecture

Maggie Wineland

The octagonal home is the truly unique type of American architecture of which many Americans have never heard. It is a symmetrical octagon with eight walls of varying lengths, and from one to 5 stories, depending on the size of house desired. By the year 1900 several hundred various octagons had been built across the nation and even into Canada. The sudden enthusiasm for the shape can be traced to a single source, Orson Fowler, who in 1857 finished a book on how he was constructing his own octagonal mansion. Although the age of industrialization saw many revolutionary developments in architecture, few were as innovative as the octagonal dwelling, which Fowler purports in his book to have so many conveniences and advantages as to render obsolete all other domestic building styles of the day. It is of interest to examine how this architectural trend and the man who begun it were indicative of the post-industrial and 19th century Romantic era in which they developed.
Looking at the Fowler octagon, it’s at first difficult to see any relationship to the romance revival architectural notions surrounding it. The plain, round, symmetrical shape is in stark contrast to the asymmetrical, romantic, brick-and-stone castellated or decorative gothic styles with frilly wood decorations which we see in the decades immediately previous. Fowler’s creation was almost devoid of decorative elements, with even the quaint cupola atop being of the functional value of lighting the central, windowless stairwell. No sentimentality existed in the style of the physical building.
Although Fowler decried the expense and pretense of decorative enhancements typical of the Gothic style, ridiculing those who build a “… try-to-be-extra-exquisite monument of gewgaw crudeness”, the concept of a self-made home and hearth for the good of the individual and family were ideas of the romance era. Do-it-yourself building and natural materials like lime and stone fit well with this ethic as well. His homemade home and self-sufficient cistern and orchards embody the period’s “independent spirit of individuals”, while his desire to use the best technology available, install conveniences, and focus on functional practicality above decoration was too a feature of American romanticism. The romantic period above all carried the notion that Americans who worked hard deserved a noble home of their own, and Fowler worked to convince them that with this building method they should and could have it.....