The Octagon House: A Home for All

In the mid-19th Century America was host to a curious architectural trend: the octagonal house. Such eight-sided homes-as well as schools, churches, barns, and businesses-were popping up across the country so quickly that by 1857 over 1,000 had been built. Though the craze has long since subsided, the book that started it all remains a valuable and curious artifact of architectural history.

A phrenologist by trade and eccentric Renaissance man by character, Orson S. Fowler subscribed to the...