Russell Kirk and the Octagonal House

Once again, I stray from my blog's title, and blather about that peninsular state immediately north of mine. Ohio is not the country's only — nor, arguably, its most — architecture-rich state. Much as early Christianity syncretized classical culture, I'll pluck post-worthy material from even heterodox sources. This is not a political blog; I don't intend, by quoting Kirk, to promote his philosophy (nor do I, by writing this disclaimer, seek to slight it).

In A Program for Conservatives (1954), political philosopher Russell Kirk eulogizes an octagon-shaped farmhouse:

When I was a very small boy, I used to lie under an oak on the hillside above the mill-pond, in the town where I was born, and look beyond the great willows in the hollow to a curious and handsome house that stood on the opposite slope, away back from the road, with three or four graceful pines pointing the way to it. This was an octagonal house, its roof crowned with a glass dome — a dignified building, for all its oddity. Well, the county planners have chopped down the willows and converted the land round about the old mill-pond into what the professional traffic-engineers and town-planners think a 'recreational area' should look like: a dull sheet of water with some dwarf evergreens to set it off. And the octagon-house was bought by a man with more money than he knew how to spend, who knocked the house down . . . and built upon its site a silly 'ranch-type' dwelling vaguely imitated from Californian styles. As Thoreau used to buy all the farms round Walden Pond in his fancy, so I had made myself, often enough, proprietor of the octagon-house in my mind's eye. But I do not care to look upon the spot now. The old genius is departed out of the town and the country about it. We do our best to assimilate every community that retains something of its peculiar character to the proletarian cosmopolis of modern mass-society.

Kirk, forever a Michigander, spent his childhood in Plymouth, taught at Michigan State University, and retired to Mecosta, an isolated village in the north-central portion of the state. The octagonal house in question, apparently, stood on Wilcox Road in Plymouth Township, Wayne County — due west of Detroit proper. The ever-useful Octagon House Inventory provides a photograph of the dwelling (for copyright's sake, I'll avoid posting the image here), and mentions a demolition date of "about 1955." Given Kirk's comments, this date seems reliable enough (though a tad late).

The building in 1951. Photo from the USGS collection, downloaded from EarthExplorer.

Just as Kirk describes, the home was topped by a glass dome — a feature uncommon even to octagon-shaped dwellings — and four conifers indeed lined its driveway. The 1876 Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Wayne, Michigan lists J.H. Phillips as holder of the 53-acre tract; by 1883, ownership had passed to one H. Heide. Phillips, like most of southern Michigan's early residents, hailed from New York. The octagonal house's replacement — the "ranch" dwelling Kirk decries — survived for a mere four decades before succumbing, like its predecessor, to the bulldozer. Today, a condominium complex occupies the site.

Phillips's eight-sided abode weathered nearly a century; its successor existed for less than half. Will the condominiums persist for only twenty years? I don't know. Only time can tell.

A Belmont County Treasure

All United States counties (with the exception of some in New England, which serve only ceremonial purposes) valuate real estate for the sake of levying taxes. In Ohio, auditors handle this task. Today's revaluations are grand affairs, with most counties opting (in part, at least) to delegate the chore to mass appraisal firms; in the nineteenth century, though, reassessments were often conducted locally. Accordingly, tax records vary in quality and availability. Most are buried in county archives (or, perhaps, housed at the Ohio Historical Society), and few websites give access to the information.

Belmont County's excellent "Tax Maps" page provides data from the 1870, 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910 reappraisals. Unlike many Ohio tax records of the nineteenth century, which mention only financial information (a property's worth, the value of taxes owed by its owner, and the like), Belmont County's papers describe its buildings. The 1880 sheet for Section 32, Mead Township is typical of those in the collection, and mentions ten frame dwellings, a grist mill — worth $1,200 (in 2015 dollars, $29,731) — and one "House and Engine." (1) The 1870 tax list for Section 18, Pultney Township describes six tracts, on which stood — collectively — five log houses, five frame barns, and a building complex sufficiently large to defy accurate description. The tax records also chronicle land use. The complex mentioned above (owned by one George Neff), for instance, accompanied 57 acres, of which 42 served as cropland, 12 were covered by meadow, and three remained forested.

The records, lovely though they may be, are riddled with inaccuracies. In some townships, assessors classified both frame and log structures as "frame"; in others, appraisers distinguished between the two types of construction. Given Belmont County's rugged terrain, a few isolated (or valueless) buildings — concealed in hollows, or perched on ridges — were no doubt overlooked.

Eventually, if time permits, I'll sift through the records, match log buildings with particular locations, and thereby create Ohio's first (fairly) accurate map of log structures existing in the 19th century.

1) Here, the meaning of "Engine" is unclear. Section 32 borders the Ohio River, and is bisected by the Central Ohio Railroad right-of-way. "Engine," then, may describe an industrial building associated with the river or railroad.