Longfellow-Hastings Octagon House

 museum, house, historic landmark

In 1848, Orson S. Fowler, a Yankee individualist and progressive social thinker, published a book entitled The Octagon House: A Home For All. In it, he argued the advantages of an eight-sided house over the standard four-sided variety. Windows on all sides offer more light and better air circulation which, in turn, lowers heating and cooling expenses. An octagon also cost less to construct, requiring shorter spans of lumber than conventional buildings. Fowler's architectural ideas were popular in the East, where most octagonal structures and homes were built. However, the popularity of this architectural style almost completely died out by the time of the Civil War.

For the original owner of the museum's octagon, Gilbert Longfellow, this was not his first eight-sided home. Gilbert Longfellow built his first octagonal house along the coast of Maine. Then in 1893, after moving to Pasadena, Longfellow built his second octagonal home on San Pasqual Street. After Longfellow died in 1912, his son Charles continued the family's farming business, purchasing additional land nearby (now part of the California Institute of Technology campus) where he established a small, but successful, citrus grove. In 1917, to make way for subdivision of the original farm, the house was moved to a city lot about a mile north of the farm on Allen Avenue.

While remaining in the same family, over the years the house fell into great disrepair. In 1973, facing demolition of the house where he had spent much of his life, Walter Hastings (Longfellow's grandson) sought assistance from the museum to save his family's home. In exchange, he donated the house to the museum. The home was moved to its present location in 1986.

During their popularity, more than 1,000 of these unique structures were built in the United States. Only twenty are known to have been built in California. The Hastings-Longfellow Octagon House is one of less than 500 octagon structures left in the United States and is one of the remaining, unaltered examples of this style in Southern California.

www.heritagesquare.org/Octagon.htm