Danbury’s octagon house, built in 1853, is a result of a fad started by Orson S. Fowler. It is one of the few octagon houses (there are 13 said to be remaining in Connecticut) that follows Fowler’s exact instructions for construction in his 1848 book, “The Octagon House: A Home for All.”
The neighborhood that formed around the area where the house was built was home to many of the immigrant hatters. Two of those hatters, the Attick brothers, purchased the octagon house from the Earle family in 1918. The house remained in the Attick family until 1980 when a cousin, Ann Abraham, purchased the house at a bank foreclosure auction.
Though on the National Register of Historic Places, by the summer of 2013 the octagon house was again in foreclosure and the property was becoming increasingly derelict. An article in the News-Times announces that the city of Danbury plans on purchasing the landmark in an attempt to save the octagon house from ruin and improve the surrounding neighborhood.
