Inkwell or Inkbottle Octagon House, Lake Landing, Engelhard, North Carolina

8-sided houses have been built for centuries, but there was a wide-spread movement in the 1850s.  Orson S. Fowler wrote The Octagon House: A Home for All in 1848. Fowler was not a professional architect. He was a phrenologist (he measured skull bumps for mental traits, yeah, really), educator and reformer. He argued that the 8-sided form would be healthier and less expensive to build.

… there was a wide-spread movement in the 1850s promoting the building of such houses. The leader of this movement was Orson S. Fowler, a New York phrenologist, educator, and reformer… Fowler argued that the octagonal house was cheaper to build than conventional houses, permitted greater economy of space, admitted more sunlight, facilitated communication between rooms, eliminated square corner, and was in closer harmony to nature than rectangular houses.

I’m not so sure eliminating square corners should be a goal. It seems to me a small octagonal house would be a challenge to furnish. The basic design Fowler promoted feature a central hall, large rooms, and wraparound verandas. Some have a central chimney. Others have a central cupola for extra light.

At least 1000 octagonal houses were built between 1850-1870 after Fowler wrote his book. Octagon houses incorporate other styles also popular at the time, like Greek or Gothic Revival.

A lot of them are just called The Octagon House, because they are the only one around. The Octagon House Lake Mattamuskeet, Engelhard, North Carolina is also called the Inkwell House, Inkbottle House or Round House.

The Lake Landing Octagon House was built in the early 1850s by Dr. William T. Sparrow. A hurricane destroyed his earlier home and it seems he believed that an octagonal home would better stand up to high winds. We don’t know whether he based his design on Fowler’s book.

Octagon House Lake Mattamuskeet, Engelhard, North Carolina
Inkwell House, Inkbottle House

The eight-sided, two-story frame house rests on brick piers and is covered with a low’-pitched, tent-like roof of standing seam metal that rises from all sides to the central octagonal chimney of stuccoed brick. Thee lower portions of the exterior walls are covered in plain weatherboard up to the level of the sills of the first-story windows; above this the walls are shingled. According to local tradition, the house was originally plastered or stuccoed on the exterior, and the presence of heavy sawn lathing under the shingles gives some credence to this tradition. The front entrance is set on the north west face of the house; this was apparently a double door originally, later partially enclosed with weatherboard to accommodate a single door, which is twentieth century replacement with glass panes. Windows are centered on the first and second levels on the north, east, and south faces of the house are without fenestration. Under the eaves on all eight sides is a cornice featuring widely spaced sawn brackets, four to a side, which accent a broad frieze decorated with shallow dentils, also rather widely spaced.

Rather than the wedge-shaped rooms that might be expected, the main two rooms on both levels are square and oriented back-to-back on a north-south axis around the central chimney, leaving trapezoidal spaces on east and west. The trapezoidal space on the west side of the house serves as an entrance/stair hall. The corresponding space on the east side, first floor, is divided into a triangular-plan closet off, the south room and an irregular four-sided room entered from the north parlor and lighted by the window on the east face. On the second floor the trapezoidal space becomes two triangular closets flanking a small rectangular room.

The house is located at 30868 US 264 in Engelhard, North Carolina.

The house is visible from the road.

When this photo was taken, the house was in pretty good condition, but it deteriorated before it was restored.

A LOT of work has repaired and renovated the house.

You can follow the restoration work at www.facebook.com/octagonhouse.nc. They also post events when you can tour the house.

Orson S. Fowler’s book The Octagon House: A Home for All is still available. You can buy it on Amazon.

The Octagon House: A Home for All on Amazon

The full name of the book is The Octagon House: A Home for All. Later editions added Or the Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building or A New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building.

*All citations unless otherwise stated are from National Registry of Historic Places The Inkwell, The Octagon House.