Phrenology4

THE “FIRST FAMILY” OF PHRENOLOGY, continued...

Phrenology ... and more

Phrenology was not the sole interest of the Fowler family. Their crusade to improve society led to an interest in other reform movements of the time. Most of these movements were at least indirectly health and medical related: the Fowlers were firm believers in fresh air, exercise, early rising, and regular bathing, as well as recommending a largely vegetarian diet and temperance (including abstention not only from alcohol, but also from tea, coffee and tobacco).

These interests led Orson Squire Fowler to architecture. He himself explained the path of his enthusiasm in the preface to A Home for All (first published in 1849)

Till past forty, his [the author’s] profession engrossed too much of his time and means to allow him to procure a comfortable home; yet for ten years he has been making observations, in all his professional peregrinations, and cogitating by months, upon the best mode of building the home of his future years. These have at length brought him to results, now reduced to practice. Let no one suppose that he has forsaken, or even turned aside from, Phrenology – that first and only occupation of his enthusiastic youth, and the idol of his mature and declining years. He has turned aside only to build him a good home, and in doing so, has made and learned improvements to adopt which will greatly increase home comforts…

Orson noted that, just as (phrenologically speaking) men’s skulls correspond with their characters, so “men’s habitations correspond with their characteristics… especially will the quantity and quality of man’s intellect evince themselves in the houses they build.”

The style that Orson advocated was the octagon house.

This plan for an “Octagon Cottage,” shows a plan that Orson Fowler characterized as notable for its “neatness, simplicity, convenient arrangement, and cheapness.” (Cottages were, in Victorian nomenclature, inexpensive rural or suburban homes.) It was claimed that the “octagon house of this size gives 137 more square feet on each floor than a square house of the same outside measurement.”

From: O.S. Fowler. A Home for all; or, the gravel wall and octagon mode of building. New York: Samuel R. Wells, 1853.

According to Fowler, octagon houses enclosed more floor space per linear square foot than rectangular houses, making them cheaper to build. He also claimed that octagons allowed more sunlight and better ventilation. Designs for the houses show, however, that Americans insisted on retaining traditional rectangular rooms; the “angles” that theoretically could produce extra light and ventilation in an octagon house were usually closed off from the living areas and restricted in use to triangular closets and pantries.

The floor plan for the octagon cottage, showing a pantry and a closet in two of the octagon’s “angles,” creating largely rectangular rooms. Octagon houses, because of the angles, generally had more closets than the usual mid-19^th century home. Fowler noted “live, even in a poor house with them [closets], and then in a good one without them… and you will want to move back again.”

From: O.S. Fowler. A Home for all; or, the gravel wall and octagon mode of building. New York: Samuel R. Wells, 1853.

The structural requirements of the octagon house led Orson to a new construction method, which he referred to as “gravel wall.” It was in reality a mix of lime, water, gravel and sand – concrete – one of the earliest modern uses of this material for domestic architecture.

As a result of Orson Fowler’s book, several thousand octagonal houses were erected. Few were built in concrete; most were brick, stone or wood.

Today, octagon houses are rare and exotic. In Plymouth County, examples can be found in Abington (Centre Avenue), Kingston (South Street), North Pembroke (Washington Street) and Plympton (Mayflower Road).   Orson Squire Fowler’s own octagon house, a huge four-story 60-room cupola-topped mansion built in Fishkill, New York, in 1850, no longer stands.

Sources include:

O.S. Fowler. Physiology, animal and mental: applied to the preservation and restoration of health of body, and power of mind. 4^th ed. New York: Fowler & Wells, 1847.

O.S. Fowler. A home for all; or, the gravel wall and octagon mode of building, new, cheap, convenient, superior and adapted to rich and poor. New York: Samuel R. Wells, 1853.
A new illustrated hand-book of phrenology and physiognomy, for students and examiners; with a descriptive chart. New York: Fowler & Wells, 1894.

John B. Blake. “Women and Medicine in Ante-Bellum America,” in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 29, No. 2, March-April 1965.

Phebe A. Hanaford. Daughters of America: or, Women of the Century. Boston: B.B. Russell, 1883.

Sources also include the following online resources:
Amherst College at amherst.edu;
the History of Phrenology on the Web at pages.britishlibrary.net, by Dr John van Whye, Department of History & Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University;
The Macleay Museum of the University of Sydney (Australia) at usyd.edu.au/su/macleay,
the Countway Library of Harvard Medical School at countway.med.harvard.edu, Hobart & William Smith Colleges at campus.hws.edu,
George Mason University’s Center for History & New Media at chnm.gmu.edu, and
the Inventory of Octagon Houses at octagon.bobanna.com