| Clapp Octagon House | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Octagon mode |
| Town or city | St. Augustine, Florida |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 29°53′14″N81°17′20″W / 29.887346°N 81.288877°W Coordinates: 29°53′14″N81°17′20″W / 29.887346°N 81.288877°W |
| Completed | 1886 |
| Client | Rollin N. Clapp |
The Clapp Octagon House is an historic octagonal house located at 62 Lighthouse Avenue in the historic Lighthouse Park neighborhood on the north end of Anastasia Island in St. Augustine, Florida. It was built in 1886 for Rollin N. Clapp of St. Louis, Missouri. [1]
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.
Anastasia Island is a barrier island located off the northeast Atlantic coast of Florida in the United States. It sits east of St. Augustine, running north-south in a slightly southeastern direction to Matanzas Inlet. The island is about 14 miles (23 km) long and an average of 1 mile in width. It is separated from the mainland by the Matanzas River, part of the Intracoastal waterway. Matanzas Bay, the body of water between the island and downtown St. Augustine, opens into St. Augustine Inlet.
St. Augustine is a city in the Southeastern United States, on the Atlantic coast of northeastern Florida. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement within the borders of the continental United States.
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It is the only classic surviving octagon house in St. Augustine. [2] It has been called: "One of St. Augustine's most important residential buildings." [3]
Later residents include: Mary Antin, [4] author of The Promised Land; Norman MacLeish, [5] artist and brother of Pulitzer Prizewinning poet and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish; and Lea Wells, the first female architect in St. Augustine.
Mary Antin was an American author and immigration rights activist. She is best known for her 1912 autobiography The Promised Land, an account of her emigration and subsequent Americanization.
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet and writer who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. MacLeish studied English at Yale University and law at Harvard University. He enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris in the 1920s. On returning to the US, he contributed to Henry Luce's magazine Fortune from 1929 to 1938. For five years MacLeish was Librarian of Congress, a post he accepted at the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1949 to 1962, MacLeish was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. MacLeish was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.
In 1989, it was listed as the Octagon House in A Guide to Florida's Historic Architecture prepared by the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects and published by the University of Florida Press. [6]
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image. The AIA also works with other members of the design and construction team to help coordinate the building industry.
It would have been one of some 30 Contributing properties in the Lighthouse Park Historic District which was proposed in 1993 to the St. Augustine city commission for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, but which was turned down by the commission because of the vehement opposition of some residents, who feared that the district would develop into an historic preservation zoning district, as had some of the historic districts on the mainland in St. Augustine. [7]
In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic district, listed locally or federally, significant. Government agencies, at the state, national, and local level in the United States, have differing definitions of what constitutes a contributing property but there are common characteristics. Local laws often regulate the changes that can be made to contributing structures within designated historic districts. The first local ordinances dealing with the alteration of buildings within historic districts was in Charleston, South Carolina in 1931.
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.
An extensive history of the building was written in 1980 by David Nolan, who worked on the official 1978-1980 survey of historic buildings in St. Augustine. A short listing on the house appeared in his book The Houses of St. Augustine in 1995. [8]
David Nolan is an American author and civil rights activist.
