Gregg-Crites Octagon House. Image credits: Wikimedia CommonsIn the small city of Circleville, Ohio, a farmer named George W. Gregg broke ground in 1855 on a house unlike anything most of his neighbours had ever lived in. Rather than the traditional rectangular farmhouse common to the era, Gregg built an eight-sided structure with rooms radiating from a central staircase like slices of a pie. In 2004, 149 years after construction began, the same building was lifted from its foundation and hauled half a mile down the road, an extraordinary intervention that saved it from demolition.A farmhouse inspired by a courthouseGregg's design was not simply a whim of his imagination. Circleville, for instance, was originally designed as a circular town, with the county courthouse built at the centre of the innermost circle. It was demolished in the early 1840s when the town was re-planned, and the streets squared off in a grid pattern, but this unusual design of the building seems to have left its mark. According to Roundtown Conservancy, the nonprofit organisation that owns and maintains the house, the farmhouse was inspired by the shape of the demolished courthouse.The farmhouse also arrived at a moment when octagonal architecture was becoming popular nationwide. In 1848, American writer and phrenologist Orson S. Fowler published Home for All: or, A New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building, arguing that octagonal homes offered advantages including greater interior space and improved access to light and ventilation. His book helped fuel a relatively short-lived but widespread architectural fad, and octagonal houses appeared throughout Ohio, with Ashtabula County developing one of the state's largest concentrations.Rooms divided like wedges of pizza.In the Gregg house, the design was as unique inside as it was outside. A spiral staircase stood in the middle of the building and rose to a glass-walled cupola, where Gregg could reportedly view his farmland. The rooms branched out from the centre like slices of a pizza, with doors connecting the rooms instead of hallways. Triangular closets were built into the outer edges of most rooms to make use of the awkward angles created by the octagonal footprint.The completed house had five main rooms on the first floor, eight identically sized bedrooms on the second, and a smaller room in the cupola at the top. The interior was extensively decorated with oak and pine woodwork, indicating the quality of workmanship that one might expect from the home of a well-off farmer in the 1850s. Gregg resided in the home until his passing in 1914, after which his wife continued living there until she passed away two years later. By around 1920, the property had passed to the Crites family, who had farmed the adjacent land for many years, as documented in the Gregg-Crites Octagon House NRHP nomination.Moving the Octagon HouseMoving an entire 19th-century brick building is no small task. Steel beams were placed in the basement and joined to form a firm base, which was mounted on a hydraulic lifting system with 96 wheels arranged in groups of four. A hydraulic system was needed because the new site, about half a mile away, sat on uneven ground that an ordinary flatbed could not handle. The Gregg-Crites Octagon House was moved intact on February 14 and 15, 2004, 149 years after construction began, with the 480-ton structure transported to a new location after steel beams were inserted to support the building during the move. The move was completed without damaging the house’s brick structure or central staircase, as detailed by Forgotten Ohio in its history of the Crites Octagon House.Post-relocation lifeAfter the relocation, the house was placed on a new foundation. The move saved the building from demolition, but restoration remained an ongoing project. The house had already stood vacant before the move, making relocation only the first step in its preservation. Vandals smashed windows and damaged interior walls in the ensuing years, although Roundtown Conservancy says the harm was mostly superficial and did little structural damage. Restoration efforts have focused on returning the interior to its mid-to-late-1850s appearance while preserving the house as a local architectural landmark. The Gregg-Crites Octagon House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021 for its architectural significance.