Orson Fowler wanted to design the best house, but he detested the traditional boxy shapes.
Too many right angles, he thought.
Today it is a house museum and is occasionally open for touring.
A chart of phrenology from Webster’s Academic Dictionary, circa 1895.
Photo:Wikimedia Commons
Fowler also attracted Mark Twain, but not because the latter believed in phrenology.
Twain appeared before Fowler in disguise to test the phrenologist, and allowed him to examine Twains head.
Fowler observed that this represented a total absence of a sense of humor.
Twain felt humiliated by this assessment, but he swallowed his pride and kept his feelings to himself.
Twain was amused when Fowler immediately found the loftiest bump of humor where he had previously found a cavity.
It was under this new role as an architect, that Fowler proposed the octagon house.
It wasted less space on hallways since all rooms radiated from one central hall.
Not only an octagonal house was more healthy to live in, it was also less costly to build.
The house had four floors and sixty rooms and forty other miscellaneous rooms and closets.
At the center stood a spiral staircase that rose seventy feet to a glass enclosed octagonal cupola.
Each floor was encircled by a porch that went all the way around.
Orson Fowlers house in Fishkill, New York.
ArmourStiner House in Irvington, New York, built in 1859.
Photo:csouza_79/Wikimedia Commons
The McElroy Octagon House on Gough St. San Francisco, California, built in 1861.
Photo:David Edelman / Dreamstime.com
Yale-Cady Octagon House in in Newport, New York, built in 1849.
Photo:Debra Millet / Dreamstime.com
Ezekiel B. Zimmermans octagon house, built in 1883, in Ohio.
