Knee Deep in the Hooah!

I come from a long line of quirky thinkers. I have been accused of this trait myself. Some people never get us, while others enjoy the unique thinking patterns and think that way themselves. I am not claiming genius status at all — I am too much of a realist to be that pretentious.

Anyway, my dear mother sent this article to me. This octagonal house in Ohio was built by my great-great-grandfather, Ezekiel Zimmerman. It’s a post Civil War era home that he built, and he even had electricity in that home before anyone else around him. Now, I need to figure out how he accomplished that one!

I have seen it before, but only in passing. Maybe one day I can get up to Ohio again and actually get to go inside of it.

Zimmerman-Bury Octagon House celebrating 125th
By LINDA HALL
Staff Writer

The Daily Record

ORRVILLE — The design of a post-Civil War era home just north of Orrville might have been influenced by a phrenologist, and when it’s open for tea, it draws a crowd.

The Zimmerman-Bury Octagon House, located on Wadsworth Road, is celebrating its 125th birthday, and its owners are once again opening the national landmark to the public.

Lynne Bury, who with her husband, Gordon Bury, purchased the home from the son of the original owner, Ezekiel Zimmerman, in 1973, regaled the Creston Friends of the Library on Monday afternoon with the history of the home. Built in 1883, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Houses in 1975.

“We honestly don’t know why he wanted an eight-sided house,” Lynne Bury said, but her family is certain Zimmerman was well-educated and attended a junior college-type of institution called Smithville Academy.

His library, the room immediately left of the main entrance, “was just stacked from the floor to the ceiling with his books,” she said.

One of the books he appeared to have read and followed was “The Octagon House: A Home for All,” written by Orson Fowler in 1852.

Fowler, who actually studied configurations of the brain and its impact on character traits, purported an octagonal pattern for a home was “more spacious, economical and healthful.”

However, according to Bury, homes constructed this way were a passing fad.

“The Civil War killed what was left of it,” she said.

The dating of her home makes it all the more unusual, as do its Queen Anne trim and gabled roof.

Zimmerman also incorporated all sorts of “newfangled” concepts, such as central heating, and he installed indoor plumbing much earlier than any of his neighbors in the area.

“He had (electrical power) before Rittman and Orrville,” Bury said.

Zimmerman’s “Russian tin” roof, another highlight of the home — along with its spiral staircase winding three floors up to the cupola — “was a good investment. We’re in the process of resealing it for the third time,” Bury said.

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