(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)