The Octagon | |
Southern and southwestern sides of the house | |
   | |
| Location | 297 E. Perry St., Tiffin, Ohio |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 41°7′1″N83°10′7.5″W / 41.11694°N 83.168750°W Coordinates: 41°7′1″N83°10′7.5″W / 41.11694°N 83.168750°W |
| Area | Less than 1 acre (0.40 ha) |
| Built | 1852 |
| Architect | Jeremiah R. Good |
| Architectural style | Octagon Mode |
| MPS | Heidelberg College MRA |
| NRHP reference # | 79002764 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | February 12, 1979 |
The Octagon is a historic octagon house on the campus of Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio, United States. Built in the mid-19th century, it has been used for residential purposes throughout its history, and while it has experienced over a century of gradual deterioration, it has been named a historic site, and the 21st century has seen plans to restore it to its original integrity.
Octagon houses were a unique house style briefly popular in the 1850s in the United States and Canada. They are characterised by an octagonal (eight-sided) plan, and often feature a flat roof and a veranda all round. Their unusual shape and appearance, quite different from the ornate pitched-roof houses typical of the period, can generally be traced to the influence of one man, amateur architect and lifestyle pundit Orson Squire Fowler. Although there are other octagonal houses worldwide, the term octagon house usually refers specifically to octagonal houses built in North America during this period, and up to the early 1900s.
Heidelberg University is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is Germany's oldest university and one of the world's oldest surviving universities. It was the third university established in the Holy Roman Empire.
Tiffin is a city in and the county seat of Seneca County, Ohio, United States. Tiffin is about 55 miles southeast of Toledo. The population was 17,963 at the 2010 census. The National Arbor Day Foundation has designated Tiffin as a Tree City USA.
The Octagon was constructed in 1852, [1] and other than Founders Hall, it was the first building constructed on Heidelberg's campus. Constructed along with the President's House and the Gerhart-Rust Residence, it was, like the others, intended to be used as faculty housing. Its builder and earliest resident was polymath Jeremiah Good, the college's professor of mathematics and also the man responsible for designing Founders Hall. During and after Good's lifetime, he and his family owned the house; since that time, it has passed through a succession of owners, most of whom have been connected to the college in some way. Little upkeep has been performed on the house for many years, permitting it to fall into disrepair; already by 1910 it had been subdivided into a pair of apartments, and during the 1960s it was rented by the college and used as a student dormitory. [2] The university finally purchased the house in 2007, after a wealthy man from New Bremen gave a large sum of money to the institution. Since that time, students, faculty, and administrators have discussed the proper method of using the Octagon; a class of students studying concepts of space and place conducted a small informal archaeological excavation, finding nothing substantial, while officials have debated restoring the property. [3]
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of subject areas, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.
New Bremen is a village in Auglaize County, Ohio, United States. The population was 2,978 at the 2010 census. It is included in the Wapakoneta, Ohio Micropolitan Statistical Area. The village is adjacent to Minster to the south.
A social space is physical or virtual space such as a social center, online social media, or other gathering place where people gather and interact. Some social spaces such as town squares or parks are public places; others such as pubs, websites. or shopping malls are privately owned and regulated.
Built of brick on a stone foundation, the two-story house features a second-story window on each side, while the first story segments are occupied either by a door or a window. A wrap-around porch surrounds several of the sides, but it does not continue to the house's rear. [4] The house is covered with a hip roof that rises only a small distance from the edges to the center; it is made of tin. [5]
In engineering, a foundation is the element of a structure which connects it to the ground, and transfers loads from the structure to the ground. Foundations are generally considered either shallow or deep. Foundation engineering is the application of soil mechanics and rock mechanics in the design of foundation elements of structures.
A storey or story is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people. The plurals are "storeys" and "stories", respectively.
A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus a hipped roof house has no gables or other vertical sides to the roof.
In 1979, the Octagon was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, qualifying because of its historically significant architecture. It was one of twelve buildings on the campus added to the Register at the same time, all as part of a multiple property submission known as the "Heidelberg College Multiple Resource Area". [1]
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred preserving the property.
