Octagon House - History

History

Early examples, before Fowler:

  • Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson's private retreat and plantation house near Lynchburg, Virginia.
  • William Thornton's Tayloe House, more commonly called The Octagon House in Washington, DC. After the White House was burned by the British during the War of 1812, President James Madison stayed in the Octagon House, and it was here that the Treaty of Ghent (ending the War of 1812) was signed. It is now the headquarters of the American Institute of Architects.

Both houses are large brick buildings in the classical tradition. They may be seen as precursors, but are somewhat different from the Victorian octagon houses which are essentially domestic structures.

Read more about this topic:  Octagon House

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
    Willa Cather (1876–1947)

    I feel as tall as you.
    Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)