Long-gone Octagons
type of construction were about 1846 to 1865. In 1855, the Woonsocket Patriot sent a reporter to Hopedale to do an article about the Hopedale Community. One of the things that he noted was that, "Of dwelling-houses there are forty-one, including three concrete octagons." The picture above at the top is of a house that was once on Prospect Street. It was probably the longest lasting of the three Hopedale octagons. It was known as "The Castle." The second photo shows an octagon house that was a bit north of where the Griffin- Dennett apartments are now - about at the present location of 96 Hopedale Street. It's the house about in the middle of the picture, and has a cupola on the roof. The third picture is an 1888 "picture map" shows the Prospect Street house and also one on Dutcher Street. The Dutcher Street octagon was just south of the Hopedale House, which, at that time was a boarding house. Now it's an apartment house called Hopedale Manor, located across Dutcher Street from the fire station. An addition was put on the boarding house later, which is why the building in the picture looks much smaller than it does now. The picture below the map was taken of the house at 33 Dutcher Street, but look to the left. You'll get a glimpse of a one-story octagon house. It didn't last long after the map was drawn. Another Hopedale picture map was done in 1898, and it was gone by then. The picture at the bottom shows the neighborhood after the octagon was replaced by the house that's now at 35 Dutcher Street. The apartment (boarding) house is back to the left and 35 Dutcher is to the right of it. Octagons didn't have a very good survival rate. None of the three in Hopedale are still standing. I had seen pictures of the one on Prospect Street, and the 1888 map showed the Dutcher Street house, but it took a while to find out where the third had been located. In the spring of 2005, Elaine and I were asked to go to Memorial School to help identify locations in some of the old Hopedale pictures they have. There, in one of the pictures, was the third octagon house I had been wondering about for some time. (The second picture on this page.) The view shows the General Draper house (now the site of the high school) on the right, the original Unitarian Church, (on the site of the present Unitarian Church) at the back, slightly right of center, and the octagon house (with a cupola on the roof) in the middle. The picture was taken from the south, from about where the Griffin- Dennett Apartments are now. The only surviving octagon house I know of in the area is on Fruit Street in Milford. (Fruit Street begins at Route 16, just a few hundred yards east of Milford Hospital. The octagon house is just a short distance up on the right. See photos below this text box.) I remember one on Maple Avenue in South Grafton, but that disappeared about twenty years ago. Hopedale does have a newer octagon building; the Father Riley Center at Sacred Heart Church. Another octagon is the tomb of the George Albert Draper family at Hopedale Village Cemetery. The big promoter of octagon houses seems to have been Orson Fowler. Here's a bit about him and his houses from a website about an octagon in Michigan. The octagon mode may be the first pure American housing style, considering that most previous building forms were adopted from European architecture. Thomas Jefferson was one of America's earliest advocates of octagon configurations, designing over 50 buildings with a manifested octagonal feature. An octagon garden schoolhouse enhances George Washington's stately Mount Vernon. Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in an octagonal study patterned after a riverboat pilot's cabin. But the leading promoter of eight-sided structures was Orson Squire Fowler. Fowler was America's foremost lecturer and writer on phrenology, the pseudo-science of defining an individual's characteristics by the contours of the head. In the middle of the 19th century, Fowler made his mark on American architecture when he touted the advantages of octagonal homes over rectangular and square structures in his widely publicized book, The Octagon House: A Home for All. According to Fowler, an octagon house was cheaper to build, allowed for additional living space, received more natural light, was easier to heat, and remained cooler in the summer. This last attribute was an important point when the ruling principles of Victorian air conditioning were, avoid direct sun and pray for a breeze. As a result of Orson Fowler's authoritative publication, a few thousand octagonal houses were erected - mostly on the East Coast and in the Midwest. Nationwide, less than 500 of these very rare, romantic, Victorian-era homes are still standing. Even in their heyday, octagon houses never lined city street and neighborhood blocks. On the contrary, an eight- sided home seemed to be the choice of the individualists, standing defiant among four- sided neighbors. Click here for an extensive site listing of octagons, some still existing, others gone, done by Robert Kline and Ellen Puerzer. The collection is divided by states ((83 houses in Massachusetts - Most octagons, with some round, some 10-sided and some 12-sided) and then organized by counties. A book on octagon houses by Kine and Puerzer is available at the Bancroft Library. Hopedale Community Menu HOME |
This map from 1870 shows that the Dutcher Street octagon house was owned by William Bancroft. At that time however, the street was named High Street. The lower cross street was Union Street and the upper one, Social Street. Click here to see the entire map. In the photo below, the house inside the red circle evidently replaced the Dutcher Street octagon on that site. |
This octagon house on Prospect Street, near the corner of Union, was owned by the Hopedale Machine Company. That was one of a number of companies owned and operated by the Draper family. |
The view shown above looks north along Hopedale Street, toward the center of town. The octagon house, in the center of the picture, was somewhere on Hopedale Street, south of the center of town,but for some years I wasn't sure if it was nearer to the present location of the Post Office, or further south. Although I'd looked at an 1870 map of Hopedale shown in part below many times, it wasn't until I was looking for something else in September 2017 that I noticed that the location of the Hopedale Street octagon house is shown on it. It's at the bottom of the map below, and Machine Co. is given as the owner. It was where the Griffin-Dennett Apartments are now. Click here if you'd like to see the entire 1870 map. |
This 1888 birdseye-view shows two of the octagon houses - one on Prospect Street and one on Dutcher Street. The Dutcher Street house is next to the apartment house across from where the fire station is now. It was gone by the time an 1899 birdseye view was done. The Hopedale Street octagon can't be found in either view. The apartment house may not look familiar because this was drawn before it was enlarged to its present size. |
The Dutcher Street octagon house is on the left in this photo. |
Google Earth view. |
Below - Octagon house on Fruit Street Milford.Photos taken in 2007. |
