Molly Young at the NY Times:
Has any man in history loved anything as much as Orson Squire Fowler loved the octagon? Fowler, born in Cohocton, N.Y., in 1809, published a book in 1848 arguing that all houses should be eight-sided. He influenced a (failed) utopian community in Kansas called Octagon City, delivered an estimated 350 public orations on octagon supremacy and built himself a 60-room octagonal palace in upstate New York.
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.
more here.