This file portion of www.watertownhistory.org website
Watertown’s Octagon House
John Richards
John Richards, born
in Hinsdale, Mass., in 1806, son of Revolutionary War forebears, graduated from
Williams College and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. He taught in a well
known school “Egremont” near where he lived, and later joined the trek across
Midwestern states for adventure and homesteading in Wisconsin. The whole
Northwest Territory was wide open for government land grants in the 1840's and
1850's and many young men from New England joined in the “go west, young man” [1]
movement. Richards, while in college, had been influenced by a new concept in
building that swept across America a few years later - the octagon shaped
house.
Arrival in
Area
Richards and two
companions came to Wisconsin in 1837, partly as the result of the financial
panic of 1837 in the east. Watertown's first white man, Timothy Johnson,
arrived shortly before that time. Richards walked and studied the areas in this
part of the state and found exactly what he wanted in the navigable Rock River
in Watertown. Good land was plentiful, there were hills and forests, but much
work needed to clear trees and stumps. He bought farm land on the east side of
the river and built a small log house. Some years later, in 1846, he completed
the purchase of 140 acres of wooded land west of the river [2],
including the high bluff which he had visualized as the site for the home he
had in mind. This home would give him a commanding
view of the Rock River valley.
Eliza
Richards
In 1840 Richards
returned east to marry Miss Eliza Forbes of Great Barrington. Her father, Moses
Forbes, was the owner of the
There were friendly
Indians around when Richards lived in Watertown - and timber wolves. In the
Octagon House today is a rug made from the skins of four timber wolves and
baskets and other artifacts given later to Mrs. Richards in exchange for loaves
of her fresh bread.
Richards and his
bride began planning the fine home in the octagon shape. During this time Richards built a dam across
the river and established a grist mill on the east bank. This flour mill burned in 1886. It was not rebuilt. Today the electric company power plant stands
on the site of the former mill. This was a time of prosperity for Watertown;
its population grew from 1,500 in 1850 to 8,500 in 1855, making it the second
sized city in Wisconsin. Richards milling operations made Richards increasingly
wealthy and he decided it was time to build the large home for his family and
build it of a size that would also take care of housing and feeding some of the
mill hands or lumbermen he employed.
The original Richards
cabin was in an almost primeval forest but land was cleared and some rented out
to others. The Octagon House on the west side of the river was some years in
the planning and three years under construction. In 1854 this beautiful home
was completed and the family moved in. The original sketches and diagrams for
the house made by John Richards are on display in the Octagon House today.
Richards ran the
mill, supervised the farm and did some law work. This pioneer lawyer did not
actively set up a law office in Watertown, but did certain amounts of legal
work when asked, He was the first district attorney in Jefferson County, helped
set up a county system, was a member of the Watertown school board, was elected
mayor in 1869-70, was also a one-time member of the Wisconsin legislature.
The House
He also engineered the construction of his
dream home.
The Octagon House,
the beautiful home built on Richards Hill in 1854, was owned and lived in by Mr. and Mrs. John Richards
and their descendants until 1938 when the family presented this generous gift
to the Watertown Historical Society. For the past 38 years the society has
owned and maintained the home open to the public from May 1 to Nov. 1 each
year. This Watertown landmark has lured thousands of visitors to what is
probably the largest pre-Civil War single family dwelling in Wisconsin, a home
with a unique place in Watertown history.
"The Octagon
House, a Home for All" by Orson S. Fowler,
was published in 1848, although he had written individual articles on the
subject earlier. Fowler, a phrenologist and publisher, had long been a writer
on fresh attitudes toward living. “Nature's forms are mostly spherical,"
Fowler wrote, "Then why not apply this form to houses?" After
publication of his Octagon House book many barns, houses, churches and schools
in octagon shape sprang up, mostly in eastern United States.
There are a number of
octagon shaped barns in this area in Ozaukee (WI) County. By 1857 at least
1,000 such houses had been built throughout the country. Fowler believed the
octagon shape, which approximates a circle, provided the greatest utilization
of space. John Richards, a typical down east Yankee and a man of many talents,
was also a visionary and agreed with this principle of a home in octagon shape.
The house was the
talk of the town when it was built, and Richards took great pride in the house
and the many innovative features he had installed. The perfect octagon measures 50x50 feet in
any direction and sets on a 17- inch foundation entirely beneath the ground.
Octagons
put edge in houses: Renewed interest in
style based upon utopian ideals
New York
Times
News Service, 03 11 2005
While most housing
designs are based on rectangular shapes, there are some homes with an unusual
eight-sided floor plan. These octagonal houses have been turning heads for more
than 150 years.
The concept of the
octagonal house was idealized by Orson Squire Fowler in his 1853 book "A
Home for All: Or a New, Cheap, Convenient and Superior Mode of Building."
Fowler, a phrenologist
who deciphered the contours and bumps on the human skull, advocated octagonal-shaped
buildings because the walls of an octagon enclose more area than a square or
rectangle with equal wall space. Fowler reasoned octagon houses were cheaper to
build, eliminated dark corners, were easier to heat and remained cooler in
summer.
About 3,000 octagon
structures were built in the mid-1800s, most of them in New York and
Massachusetts. Octagon structures built as a result of Fowler's book and other
octagon-construction books of the day included houses, churches, schools,
barns, carriage houses and outbuildings.
[And Watertown’s Octagon House]
Watertown Brick
Three courses or
rounds of brick form the 13-inch walls; the inner two rounds are Watertown
brick from the local and newly established brick yards which began work in
Watertown in 1847. The outside brick layer was Cream City brick hauled from
Milwaukee by ox and horse teams over the new
plank road. Most of the lumber, basswood, cherry and oak came from the
Richards woods. Some pine was used. This had been floated down the river and
was prepared in the Richards mill.
Many Rooms
The large three-story
home, plus basement and windowed cupola, has 57 rooms counting halls and
closets. The main rooms are square, the corner rooms used for children's or
sewing rooms. The original house had narrow verandas which encircled the house
on the first and second levels. When they became unsafe they were removed. A
good sized replica of the Octagon House, with the porches, is on the grounds to
show visitors the original design.
The first floor
rooms, a music room, living room, dining room, butlery and conservatory are 10
feet, 10 inches in height. A dumb waiter functions between the dining room and
kitchen in the basement level, and a large chest of drawers was built into the
south wall of the dining room for linens and storage. Large family bedrooms
with accompanying small corner rooms for the small children are on the second
floor. The ceilings at this level are 9 feet, 9 inches. The third floor had been
added to Richards' original design in order to accommodate the young men who
worked in his mill.
Above the third floor
is the sizeable cupola with chimneys extending from the corners. The third
floor ceiling slopes toward the center to follow the pitch of the roof line.
This slope is necessary to take care of one of one of the most unusual features
of the house - a system for running water.
An over 12x6 foot
size wooden water tank made of basswood and lined with zinc is suspended above
the floor. The tank held rain water
which flowed in from the funnel-shaped roof.
This water was then diverted to faucets on both the second and third
floor stair landings, to the kitchen, to a basement cistern and the run-off
drained to the bottom of the hill toward the river.
Light which comes
through the cupola windows falls on the spiral cantilevered hanging staircase,
with its hand molded cherry rail, the work of skilled artisans of well over a
century ago. The stair, known to be one of the few of its kind in the country,
is unsupported on one side but securely anchored into the brick walls in the
stairwell so that there is not a creak after the many years since its
construction.
Air
Conditioning
Richards built a form
of air conditioning into his home with louvers that opened at night to trap the
cool air, circulated it throughout the walls, and the louvers closed during the
heat of the day. Much of the work and time of the household centered in the
basement level, where there was the kitchen, a cider room, vegetable room,
cistern, pantry, wood storage and furnace room. A large Dutch oven in which 24
loaves of bread were baked at a time helped feed both the family and the mill
hands. A furnace capable of heating all these stories in the house burned as
much as a cord of wood a day. Exit from the basement level is on the ground
level in back; the lower hall is paved with bricks.
Authentic furnishings
and artifacts of the Richards' era are in the Octagon House. Much of the
furniture was family furniture presented to the Historical Society with the
home. The first piano brought to Wisconsin, a Gilbert square, was purchased by
Richards for the music room. The dining room furniture belonged to the Richards
family and some fine pieces were donated by the John W. Cole family. Certain
rugs, curtains and other pieces had to be replaced throughout the years but
were carefully selected from the same period. The dining room windows have
always had wide white window shades trimmed by hand. Original kerosene
chandeliers hang in the downstairs room and in the Richards bedroom on the
second floor. Second floor rooms were
bedrooms and contained a replica of the Lincoln bed, the same as used in Lincoln's
home in Springfield, IL, and in the Richards' bedroom one can view the
cannonball bed, so called because of its interesting construction. There is
also the child's cradle made by Richards.
Bunks like those used
by the millhands are along the wall of a third floor bedroom. Also in the room is
an old fashioned zinc lined bathtub and articles used by the millhands for
entertainment in their off hours. These men, in addition to working in the
mill, frequently floated logs down the Rock River. Kitchen cupboards hold many
cooking utensils used by Mrs. Richards. The old fashioned wood range is located
near the Dutch oven. In short, the home shows authentic articles of daily
living used or typical of being used during the over 80 years the family
occupied the home.
Library of Congress
images, 1935:
Historic engineering record, pg 1
Historic engineering record, pg 2
Historic engineering record, pg 3
Historic engineering record, pg 4
Historic engineering record, pg 5
Hospitable People
Both John Richards
and Mrs. Richards were hospitable people. Many old letters in the film attest
to this hospitality. Richards was big hearted and generous and never denied his
family anything. His bookkeeping system, however, left something to be desired.
He kept no accounts, marked sales and money due him on a handy shingle or
forgot the transaction entirely. Mrs. Richards found this difficult after he
died when she took over management of the farm and found no record of back
debts listed for her to collect, though she knew there were many.
The couple had eight
children, five of whom lived to adulthood in the Octagon Home; Anna Richards
Thomas, Alice Richards Green, Moses Richards, Willie Richards and Charles
Richards.
John Richards died in
1874. Mrs. Richards in 1902. Their daughter, Mrs. Thomas, lived in the big home
until 1936 when she died at the age of 94. Her son, Willie, died the next year.
He was the last family occupant of the Octagon House.
In 1938 Estelle
Bennett Richards, widow of Charles Richards, the youngest Richards son, signed
the deed which turned over ownership of the home to the Watertown Historical
Society with the condition that in the future the house be open to the public
at stated times.
There had been desire
on the part of Mrs. John Richards that the family do something for Watertown
with the house, and this plan was followed through by her family. Harvey
Richards, a son of Estelle Bennett Richards and Charles Richards, and grandson
of the original builder, John Richards, worked with G. H. Lehrkind, Historical
Society president in 1938, and Attorney Wallace Thauer to transfer title of the
property. Hans Gaebler, a real historian and most interested in the
preservation of historic sites, was in many ways responsible for organization
of the Watertown Historical Society.
The Articles of
Incorporation for the Watertown Historical Society were signed in 1933 by John
D. Clifford and Jane Lord, two of the charter members. Other charter members
were Mrs. G. C. Lewis, Tom Lewis, William Thomas, Claire Herrman and Gladys
Mollart. Persons who greatly helped put
the new society on its feet and helped with much of the original planning were,
in addition to the above, Mrs. Lydia Wiggenhorn, Mrs. Dan Thauer, Mrs. Eli
Fischer, Sidney Northrop, Prof. E. C. Kiessling, Dr. A. C. Hahn, James
Anderson, Marcella Killian and Miss Ella Wilder.
As of 1976 five men
had served as president of the Historical Society: Hans Gaebler, G. H.
Lehrkind, Dr. Oscar Meyer, Byron Wackett, Lee Block and Fred Kehl. There had
been two curators to that date: Mrs. G. C. Lewis, 1939 to 1945 and Gladys
Mollart, who served since 1945.
Three Buildings Added
Three buildings have
been added on the Octagon House grounds since the Historical Society was presented
with the house. The first American
kindergarten, founded by Mrs. Carl Schurz in 1856, was moved from its former
location at 2nd & Jones streets.
A pioneer barn was
moved from the east side of Watertown, where it stood at one end of the Plank
Road as the toll house, to the Octagon grounds, and a new building, the Gladys
Mollart tour center, was completed in 1969 and dedicated to Miss Mollart.
In addition to the
buildings much help has been received in landscaping the grounds and many
symbols of Watertown's past have been donated to the Society for preservation
of some of Watertown's early history. During many years the Octagon Garden club
has planted and tended an old fashioned herb garden just outside the kitchen
door.
Watertown Firsts
To name just a few of
Watertown's firsts which are located on the grounds:
The bronze bell from
Watertown s first city hall, dated 1869.
The fountain statue
Phillis, originally given to the city by Mrs. Carrie Mowder Hill but presented
to the Historical Society when the new city hall was built.
The anvil used by the
A. Kramp Company for 115 years for pounding out horse shoes or steel tires or
rims for the wagon wheels for the army quartermasters corps, presented to the
Society in 1972 by Leonard Kramp.
The historic old
green trunk marked for Margarethe Meyer Schurz “via Frankfurt, M. Bremen Nach
New York America" ended its travels in the room in which she taught,
presented by Mrs. Gerald Fahl, through her child's kindergarten class in
Oconomowoc, after she found it at a farm auction.
A cobbler's bench
from the first shoe factory Fridolin Ruesch
began in the 1850’s and operated by that family for several generations, presented
by Mrs. Dean Lawrence.
The Indian which
adorned Watertown's
A large heavy
"Buhrstone" mill wheel ordered from France in 1878 and used by the
Empire, later the Globe Milling Co., presented by the Floyd Burnetts, last
owners of the property on which the mill wheel had been mounted.
An early beehive and
slatted wooded crate manufactured by G. B. Lewis Co., the bread box made to
ship food to American troops in World War I, thousands of miles from home base.
Painting
of Octagon House
Mathilde Schley
painting of the House is preserved in the museum.
2004
150th
Anniversary of Octagon House, 2004
Watertown Daily Times article
Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel article
2006
Octagon House
porches to be restored: With rotting
boards and posts, a recent anonymous donation to the Watertown Historical
Society, will allow for the refurbishing of the characteristic porches.
Compiled
by Ken Riedl
