1067 Green St
San Francisco, CA 94133, USA

Feusier Octagon House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:
The Feusier Octagon is one of only 2 houses surviving in San Francisco built on the octagon plan, the other being the Colonial Dames Octagon on Gough Street. The exact year of its erection is uncertain, but the Feusier is one of the oldest houses on Russian Hill; the most informed estimate indicates that it was built in 1857 or 1858, with one source alleging construction as early as 1852. This Octagon is notable in having preserved the original exterior construction, and it fortunately continues to reflect its eight-sided shape on the interior.

Octagon houses became something of a national fad in the mid-19th century as the result of a book by Orson Squire Fowler entitled "A Home for All; or, the Gravel Wall and the “Octagon Mode of Building". in this work Fowler, a New York phrenologist who identified one's well-being with the shape and construction of his domicile, proposed a new and cheap way to construct houses for the "new age". The octagon form was prescribed by Fowler so that every room could receive sunlight at some time of the day; he asserted that it would admit more sunlight into more rooms for longer periods than any other building form.

The fad resulting from Fowler's book swept several sections of the country and has left us with a hundred or more Octagons nation-wide. These are concentrated in the Hudson River country of New York, in New England (especially New Hampshire), in the South and Southwest (Mississippi and Texas), and in the Far West, including California. At one time there were at least five (possibly six) Octagon Houses in San Francisco, as well as others in the Fruitvale section of Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area. The Feusier House and the Colonial Dames Octagon are apparently the only, remaining in the entire Bay Area.

The House is commonly associated with the name Feusier in whose family it remained for sane eighty years. According to the family history, Louis Feusier arrived in California about 1852, spent the years 1857-1867 in Nevada, and then returned to San Francisco, later marrying Louise Guerne, daughter of the pioneer for whom Guerneville was named. Feusier is said to have been a companion of such San Francisco notables as Leland Stanford and Mark Twain; he was a man of varied business interests.

The house appears in early views of the city showing Russian Hill, including views dated 1858, 1861, 1862 and 1863. It was near the summit, not closely surrounded by other buildings, and was indeed an outstanding landmark of the city’s skyline, lake other buildings on Russian Hill, the Feusier House escaped the 1906 Earthquake, but was menaced by the Fire; the outbuildings were dynamited but fortunately -the main house was saved. Today, with Russian Hill built up intensely and high-rise apartments vying with older dwellings, the Feusier Octagon no longer stands isolated and dominant as shown in the pictures of a century ago; but it remains a link with the early days of the city and a visible reminder of the time when eight-sided houses were a fashion. The Feusier is undoubtedly the most distinguished landmark on its block, but it is by no means the only building of interest. The 1000 block of Green Street is, in fact, one of the most charming in the city due to its profusion of fine residences and its dignified and spacious profile.