An unusual octagon house with a Mansard roof is located at 86 Hallock Street in New Haven’s Hill District. It was built by Massena Clark, a real estate speculator who once had his own large estate on Whitney Avenue.
Located on Main Street in Old Saybrook is an octagon-shaped house known as the Ingham House. It was a prefab building, said to have been purchased from the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue around 1890. The attribution to Sears and Roebuck is open to question, because a number of online sources indicate that the company only began offering kit houses in 1908, and apparently such homes were only available in the United States starting around 1906. So the origins of the house must be considered as still undetermined. The building, which is not a completely symmetrical octagon, has been extensively remodeled to become a dentist’s office.
East Hartford has an octagon house on Naubuc Avenue. According to one source, it was built in 1852 for Rev. Benjamin C. Phelps, the minister at Hockanum Methodist Church. According to another source, the house was built in 1858 for the Curtis family and was owned, after 1867, by the Hollister family.
The Leete-Griswold House, on Fair Street (formerly Petticoat Lane) in Guilford, was built by Edwin A. Leete in 1856. The house is in the Octagon style, although it no longer has its original overhanging eaves with decorative brackets. Leete had grown up in the Pelatiah Leete III House on Leetes Island in Guilford. He only lived in his octagon house a short time before moving to a larger house nearby. (more…)
Danbury‘s Octagon House was built in 1853 by John T. Earle and remained in the Earle family in 1918. Today, it is located at 21 Spring Street, but when it was constructed, Spring Street did not yet exist, so the house‘s original address was on Elm Street. The house, still encircled by a three story porch, is now an apartment building.
Albert G. Stark, a businessman who owned a general store, built an Octagon house on West Mystic Avenue in 1850, adjacent to the home of his brother, the ship captain, Henry S. Stark. Albert died at age 29 and his widow remained in the house and eventually remarried.
One of Connecticut’s few examples of an Octagon house (which was popularized by Orson Squire Fowler in the 1850s) is in the Yalesville section of Wallingford. The house, located at 31 New Place Street (and one of two on the street) was built around 1856. (Edits to this entry are in bold).
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