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Join us for a look inside this one-of-a-kind National Historic Landmark! Perfect for first time visitors or those returning to see The Octagon House again, the one-hour Classic Tour provides a foundational understanding of this iconic house. Fowler’s phrenological follies have a way of oozing into his architectural conjectures. Animal habitations, he writes, correspond perfectly with the characteristics of their residents — for proof, look no further than the “coarse nest” of the equally “coarse-grained” goose! To Fowler, a fine and elegant house signified — and yet was also, somehow, the cause of — the fineness and elegance of its tenants.
Virtual Tour of Octagon House
The next image presents a copy of the book, “The Octagon House A Home for All” by Orson S. Fowler. Fowler originally published this book in 1853 to promote the construction of octagon houses. Also shown are the interior floorplans for both the lower and upper floors of the original house.
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Now owned by the Architects Foundation, The Octagon continues to inspire current and future architects, and highlights important moments and movements in American and architectural history. I write of neighbors, and of anecdotes connected with them, for the gratification of my family. He had been induced by his hereditary friend, General Washington, to erect his town house in the Federal city, having previously had an eye to Philadelphia. There was scarcely any pavement, except in front of detached houses.
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Hometown Hauntings: The Haunting of Octagon Hall.
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Filming
Fowler followed his own advice and built his family’s 70-foot-high, 100-foot-wide, three-story mega-octagon, visible for miles. Though he published his ideas in books with detailed diagrams, Fowler was only moderately successful in solving America’s housing needs. By the end of the century, slightly more than 1,000 octagons were up, exotic additions to American cities and countrysides. In 1844, building a sphere was not technologically possible, but the next best shape, an octagon, was. Fowler reasoned that square corners created useless space but that a form with many angles, pierced with windows, provided just what’s needed, letting in healthy light.
Advantages of the octagon plan
Brian Kramp is checking out the impressive 4 story spiral staircase inside this impressive tourist attraction in Watertown. One of the most celebrated occupants of this house was Carl Carmer, the author, poet and historian. Carmer resided in the house from 1940 to the time of his death in 1976. Major restoration efforts were undertaken in the 1960s and the 1990s, which returned The Octagon to its Tayloe-era appearance. Currently operated by the Architects Foundation, The Octagon offers self-guided tours, permanent and changing exhibitions, public programming, and guided tours by appointment.
Ascending steps with Iron rails to a Portico, there is a large Circular Hall with Marble floor, heated formerly with two Imported Coal Stoves - with a Hat & Coat closet on one side. Passing under an Arch supported by Columns is the main passage with a beautiful Winding Stair way to the top of the house. Near there between on the right, is the door (mahogany) into the Drawing Room 30+20 on 18 Street.
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The Tayloes were involved in shipbuilding, horse breeding and racing, and owned several iron foundries—they were fairly diversified for a plantation family. The Tayloes enslaved hundreds of people, and had between 12 and 18 who worked at the Octagon. In 1872, tea importer Joseph Stiner purchased the home as a country retreat. While Armour’s original design for the house adhered strictly to Fowler’s practical philosophies, Stiner turned it into an ornate Victorian folly.
Walking around the home today, which still serves as a private residence, you can see the influences of previous and current owners and the times in which they lived. You might see a TV in one room and a phrenologist bust in the next, a collection of antique tea tins in the kitchen, and a 1930s mystery novel, The Octagon House by Phoebe Atwood Taylor, on a nightstand. He believed in a diet consisting of wheat bread and fruit juice; he contended implausibly that glass was the best material for a home’s roof. If Fowler was an eccentric pebble dropped into the pond of Victorian America, the remaining octagons scattered across the United States are a final faint ripple of his influence. The house served as an important social center in Washington’s early years. When the British burned the White House in 1814, President Madison and his family lived in the Octagon for six months as the city rebuilt.
The design of the Longfellow house was well-suited to a garden lot with a mountain view. At the time of the final move, Pasadena Heritage argued that the Longfellow house should remain in the city of its origin. But the horse was already out of the octagon; Longfellow’s house should never have been moved in the first place from the original location on San Pasqual. Sprawl reached San Pasqual Street, the Longfellow family moved its octagon a mile north to Allen Avenue. In 1973, the Cultural Heritage Foundation of Southern California, which runs the Heritage Square Museum, struck a deal with Walter Hastings, Longfellow’s grandson who lived in the house. The foundation would save his home from threatened demolition if he donated the octagon.
It was here that President Madison signed the Treaty of Ghent in February 1815, formally ending the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States. Today, octagon buildings are a rare enough find to be novel once more. Here are six places where you can see the remnants of this curious architectural trend. She is a very popular ghost in Washington, D.C., and is said to haunt several buildings around town. Dolley and James Madison resided in the Octagon House from September 1814 through March 1815, after the White House was burned by the British.
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Consider exchanging the kitchen with the base floor living room to avoid a dinnertime disaster. The main floor boasts four rooms of significant size with four smaller segments in between them. Although each room has a specific designation, you can swap these out at will.
For example, a family of fitness enthusiasts could exchange the music room for a gym instead. Following the passing of Anna Richards Thomas in 1936, the mansion was donated in 1938 to the fledgling Watertown Historical Society whose dedicated members have maintained the Octagon House as a public museum ever since. Fowler believed, as we are learning, that “utility and beauty” need to be inseparable. In addition to his eight-sided plan, he pushed for indoor plumbing, flush toilets, central heating, gas lighting, insulation and cisterns for filtered rainwater. Ask each group to discuss how the different people living and working at The Octagon--the Tayloes, their free servants, and the people they enslaved--may have experienced each event.
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