I thought this kind of eccentric might interest some of you, from a book review.
An Eccentric Victorian, His Book and the Giant Pink Pastry of a House He Inspired
In “The Octagon House,” published in 1848, Orson Squire Fowler wondered why anyone would build a four-sided home when they could have an eight-sided one.
His enthusiasm was not merely contagious but downright virulent. In the decades following the publication of “The Octagon House: A Home for All,” octagonal homes “broke out in New York State like a rash,” as an article in this newspaper put it. So too in the Midwest, which briefly became a hotbed of Fowler-incited dwellings.
His résumé is that of a classic 19th-century polymath. Fowler was a sexologist, hydrotherapy proponent, amateur architect, publisher (including of Walt Whitman), phrenologist (chronistically, if unfortunately) and eclectic lecturer who evangelized on behalf of vegetarianism, women’s suffrage, prison reform, dancing and mesmerism.
If Fowler was an eccentric pebble dropped into the pond of Victorian America, the remaining octagons scattered across the United States are a final faint ripple of his influence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/b...on-fowler.html
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