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The Armour-Stiner (Octagon) House is one of the
most visually unique homes in the world. It is the only known residence
constructed in the eight-sided, domed colonnaded shape of a classic
Roman Temple.
The Octagon House was originally built in the 1860s following the
publication of The Octagon House, a Home for All
by Orson Squire Fowler, a phrenologist, sexologist and amateur
architect. Fowler advocated octagonal instead of four-sided houses on
the supposition that the shape enclosed more space, created rooms which
received twice as much sunlight and had greater accessibility to each
other.
In 1872, the house was purchased by Joseph Stiner, a prominent New York
City tea merchant. His alterations created the present lyrical
structure. The exterior embellishments are extraordinarily festive with
floral detailing in the cast iron cresting and railings and elaborately
carved wood scrollwork and capitals – all painted in shades of rose,
blue, violet and red. The interiors are equally decorative with painted
and stenciled ceilings, trim with gold, silver and bronze leaf and
unique 8-sided motifs in the plasterwork, woodwork and etched glass.
Subsequent owners of the house have been imaginative people. In the
1930s it was occupied by Aleko E. Lilius, a Finnish writer and explorer
who had lived with a female pirate who plundered ships off the coast of
China. Carl Carmer, the celebrated author, poet and historian, resided
in the house from 1946 to the time of his death in 1976. The house
plays a role in a number of his published tales, including stories of a
resident ghost.
Shortly after the death of Carl Carmer, the house was acquired by the
National Trust for Historic Preservation. Unstable and in need of
restoration, it was the first house to be resold to a private citizen.
Joseph Pell Lombardi, the owner, is a Preservation Architect who has
conserved the house, interiors, grounds and outbuildings. (Click images for full-size view)
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Liberty
Tower 
