Devereaux, Nathan, Octagon House

The Devereaux octagon is a very rare example of a nineteenth-century national architectural mode associated with its leading proponent, Orson Squire Fowler (1809-87). Octagons still catch our eye in the landscape; certainly they were novel, and even radical, forms in the 1850s and 1860s. Only a handful of octagon houses were built in Washtenaw County in the 1800s, and of those just two other examples are known to exist. Octagons are arguably the most uniquely American of nineteenth-century architectural forms, with no clear European antecedents. The Devereaux octagon is particularly exceptional because of its clear link to Orson Squire Fowler. Nathan Devereaux (1817-1897), the builder of this house, was inspired by Fowler's ideas and constructed the house in 1864. The house has remained in the Devereaux family since its construction, maintaining its historical integrity and serving as a testament to the architectural innovation of its time.

The Devereaux octagon house is located in rural Northfield Township within Washtenaw County. The house faces north on unpaved Eight Mile Road with woods and some open fields in the immediate vicinity. Inspired by a lecture given by Orson Squire Fowler in the 1850s, Nathan Devereaux constructed this home in 1864. It is a hip-roof one-and-a-half story frame building topped by an octagonal cupola. On the exterior, the eight sides of the main building are equal in length, although a small rectangular utility room projects from the rear side. The foundation is of fieldstone. Currently, the exterior walls are covered over with white asbestos siding and the roof is of grayish-white asphalt shingles. On the interior, the rooms are generally rectangular in shape, with triangular closets (or in the case of the front door, a vestibule) to square off the corners. Both exterior and interior ornamentation is fairly flat and simple, although the front door and parlor have been highlighted with various architectural details. From its inception in 1864 to the present (2002), the house has been owned by the Devereaux family. The house is in excellent condition, both inside and out, due in great measure to the efforts of Nathan's grandson, John Devereaux (1908-1997), as well as the continuing attention given to it by John's widow, Vivian. The modernizations and few alterations made to it have left the integrity of this rare original octagon farmhouse intact.

The Devereaux octagon house is located on thirty acres of farmland and woodland out of what was originally a fifty-acre farm. The actual farm buildings associated with the property have changed over time. The most prominent of these, a large dairy barn and adjacent milkhouse, were completely destroyed by arson on Oct. 30 (devil's night) in 1989. In the 1990s, two ten-acre parcels were split off from the original farmstead, although they remain in the Devereaux family. Despite encroaching development within a half-mile of the Devereaux octagon, its setting and the rural areas adjacent to it have been remarkably unaltered in the past sixty years.

The house's exterior walls (beneath the asbestos siding) are clad in tulip wood (or "white wood") clapboard, and the roof was cedar shingled. The original fieldstone foundation is still apparent. On the interior, the basement level displays post-and-beam construction, while the house's superstructure is of balloon-frame construction using oak two-by-fours. The interior floor plan has changed slightly over time, as described in the "Alterations" section below.

Fenestration was carefully considered so that the interior receives light in the living areas, and so that the exterior appears symmetric and balanced from the front. The small upstairs windows appear on four alternating sides, a pattern that is repeated in the cupola window arrangement.

The siting of this building is unusual. The front door faces northeast so that it is slightly askew from the road. Because of the interior layout of rooms, this is a sensible design. The front door opens into a triangular coatroom/vestibule while the parlor has a panoramic view of the road and passersby. If the front door had been on the north face of the building, the road wouldn't be visible from the living area.

The most balanced view of the house appears as one looks at the northeast (front door) side (photo 1). The front door sits symmetrically between two identical sides. As with many homes of this era, the front door received the most elaborate ornamentation. In this case, the details are in the Greek Revival style. Paired thin pilasters on either side of the door itself flanked sidelights above simple paneled aprons and supported a broad frieze and flat-topped, projecting classical cornice. While the doorway's entablature and the sidelights remain in place, the inner set of pilasters flanking the door are no longer present and the outer set are cut off at the lower ends of the sidelights. A modern stock door has replaced the original paneled one. The north (parlor) and east (bathroom and kitchen) sides have the identical fenestration pattern. Two tall lower windows are framed by flat boards with a small projecting sill at the bottom and a slightly pointed arch at the top. The upper story windows, which are a fourth the height of the bottom windows, have flat simple rectangular framing around them.

Continuing around the house to the southeast (kitchen) side, the same lower fenestration pattern of the east and north sides is evident above the basement door (photo 2). However, this is one of the alternating sides that does not have upper story windows. The southeastern exposure into the kitchen is glorious on sunny mornings. The kitchen chimney is still intact, as is the outside basement doorway which leads to a wide stair.

The south side of the house, which had been the location of the summer kitchen, cistern, and woodshed, is now an enclosed utility room. The southwest face is unique (photo 3). A small square window that brings light into a triangular closet is the only piercing. It is a very functional unadorned window - appropriate for the rear side of a farmhouse.

The west side is identical to the north and east sides, with pairs of tall windows below and short horizontal windows above. This is the outside wall of the first floor bedroom.

Continuing around the house to the northwest side (behind which is a bedroom closet), the exterior is completely blank (photo 4). There was no reason to have windows here: this wall isn't visible when looking at the facade, and as a bedroom closet, light and air circulation aren't required. It is also one of the alternating sides that has no windows on the cupola or upper story.

The cupola is a fanciful addition and is treated as such. Decorative vertical bands have been applied to the corners of the octagon shape, emphasizing the edges. Window lintel-height horizontal bands appear on each face of the cupola, interrupted by the low, gabled window caps. These caps duplicate those of the first-story windows.

As with the exterior, the current state of the interior is tidy and well-maintained. Beginning with the basement level, the original fieldstone walls and posts and beams of small tree trunks are still evident. There is also a stairway leading up to the outside doorway.

Going up the stairs from the basement, one enters the spacious, well-lit kitchen. Along the west wall is the sink. To the right are a pair of doors. The left door leads to the basement and the right opens up to the first floor bedroom. This door is different from all the others that lead to the kitchen. It has an extra horizontal panel near the doorknob, and its frame is slightly more detailed than the others. To the left of the sink is another pair of doors. A shorter door opens to a triangular kitchen closet with the square window that we've already seen on the southwest exterior wall. The other door leads to the upstairs. On the south wall is the door leading to the utility room.

The door frames in the parlor are more elaborate than those anywhere else in the house, which is not surprising given the attention to the front door on the facade. The shape of the door frame molding is similar to the exterior window frames on the lower story. Wood "graining" apparent on the front door molding was originally done throughout the house. The parlor is a relatively large, square-shaped room. The window molding is more elaborate here, and wood panels extend beneath the windows to the floor. Mopboards here are ten inches in height.

The first floor bedroom has a closet with a door similar to the ones in the kitchen. Its alignment has shifted slightly over the years.

A stairway from the kitchen ascends to the second story. It leads to a well-lit central room that receives daylight from the cupola above as well as the second floor windows on the south face of the house. The railing was assembled from machine-made wooden balusters that have been whittled at the ends. There are three bedrooms reached from this central area. The ceilings slope down to the eaves, and the small second story windows let light in at floor level. The front bedroom has a metal plate placed over the original chimney hole.

A built-in stepladder leads up to the cupola, where one can easily see the oak roof boards from underneath. Nails projecting from the rafters may have been used for drying plants. The wood laths beneath the plaster are evident near the windows.

Currently, there is a two-car garage, a chicken coop, a small corncrib, and a concrete silo on the Devereaux property. In previous times there was also a dairy barn and adjacent milk house; a smaller barn originally used as a carriage house; and a second, larger corncrib on the farmstead.

The oldest two outbuildings on the property were the dairy barn and the carriage house. The carriage house, an unpainted gabled two-story barn made of white pine, may have been on the property when Nathan and Eunice first settled there; the builder and the date it was built is unknown. Perpendicularly oriented to the road, it was essentially an English three-bay barn in proportion and shape, with some modifications in door placement and window piercing. Along the south side, stalls were built, presumably for horses, and a loft was built that probably held hay. The foundation was made of small stones. A bench for carpentry was located along the east wall near a window, close to the southeast corner. In the 1980s this barn was taken down. At the time many more of the same kind of small stones used in the wall foundations were found under the floor. This is curious because there are few stones of any size on the Devereaux property. Their function and origin is unclear.

The structure that eventually became the dairy barn was original to the farm in 1856 when Nathan Devereaux first purchased the property. In 1909 it was rebuilt by Will to become the dairy barn that was lost to arson eighty years later. On the east side of the dairy barn, John built a milk house. A concrete tank in it held several milk cans. Nearby, a well supplied cool water to the concrete tank. In the early years, water was drawn from the well by a pail; later it was operated with a wooden hand pump. In the 1930s electricity was brought into the area, and the wooden pump was replaced by an electric one. Eventually, a new milk house had to be built to accommodate the electric tank required for commercial milk production. This was constructed on the west side of the dairy barn. In 1947 or 1948 the concrete silo was built adjacent to the dairy barn. Of the barn, milk houses, and silo, only the silo remains.

When John was sixteen (1924), he built a chicken coop. He had hopes of making money with chickens, buying a hundred or so at a time, but the profits never quite materialized. Although Vivian kept chickens in the early years of their marriage, allergies prevented her from continuing to raise them. The chicken coop is now covered with three-inch wide white aluminum siding. It is located behind the house with a parallel orientation to Eight Mile Road. Windows run along the south side of it, bringing light and warmth into the coop during winter days.

John also constructed a corncrib in the 1920s. The materials came from another corncrib on a farm elsewhere. He built this corncrib on concrete posts to raise it off the ground, and ear corn was stored in it. This wooden corncrib has been painted red and is located southwest of the house. It has a perpendicular orientation to Eight Mile Road.

In the 1950s, John added two more structures that, like the corncrib and the chicken coop, are still standing. A concrete block garage was built in 1952 by John and a neighbor. A year later, John built a substantial "tool shed" using standing virgin timber from the farm. The tool shed is now on property owned by John's daughter, Marilyn (nee Devereaux), and her husband, Steve Harrington.

The chicken coop, corncrib, and garage are an integral part of the history of the homelot because of their function in the daily activities of farming. Also, they were built by the homeowner who lived and worked there for most of the twentieth century.

Fortunately, many of the alterations made to the Devereaux octagon were experienced in the current Devereaux family members' lifetimes, and so detailed information, including dates, are known. To understand these changes it makes most sense to know something about the people who occupied the house because at times adaptations occurred to suit specific family situations. The alterations have not affected the historic integrity of the house and have generally made it more livable for the occupants.

The first known modifications to the Devereaux octagon occurred near the turn of the twentieth century and were to accommodate two families who were living in the house at the time. Nathan (1817-1897) and Eunice (1826-1907) had four children: John Wilson ("Will"), Mitta, Lee, and Ella. After Nathan's death in 1897, Will took over the responsibility of the farm. He married Emily Rorabacher. Eunice and Mitta, who became a seamstress and never married, continued to live in the house. By adding a doorway to the lower bedroom that opened into the parlor, one family had access to the bedroom and parlor area, while the other had access to the upstairs. This new door is the one with more detailed features, described in the "Interior" section above. Both families shared the kitchen.

Eventually, Will and Emily Devereaux and their children, John and Laura May, were the sole residents of the octagon house. A lilac bush, planted by Emily, still stands next to the northeast corner of the house. John slept in the hall upstairs. His cat learned that by climbing up a hawthorn tree and onto the woodshed roof, she would be let in through an upstairs window by John.

By the 1930s, Laura May had married and left home, and John and his father were the remaining occupants of the farmhouse. Along the rear wall, where the utility room now stands, there was a summer kitchen with a wooden platform about twelve feet across. Beneath this was a cistern. One day a neighbor's horse got loose and wandered over to the Devereaux farm. Finding some grain on the wooden platform, the horse stepped on it and fell right into the cistern with both front legs. The horse was rescued by Will and John.

Originally, there was trim attached to the house that featured octagon pieces and swirls; these were removed at some point by John because they were too laborious to maintain. Also, Greek Revival style pilasters were originally applied to the edges of each face of the building.

In 1935, Will passed on, and John continued farming by himself. Emil Lorch recorded information about the Devereaux octagon in 1937, and that documentation is currently located in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan. John generously allowed Mr. Lorch to interview him, take photographs of the exterior, and sketch a current floor plan of the first and second floors (unfortunately, the first floor drawing is inaccurate). The photographs provide rare and invaluable insight into the octagon house seventy years after it was built and just before it was modernized.

In the late 1930s, John sold some of his farm produce at the Ann Arbor Farmers' Market, and it was there that he and Vivian Golden met. She had been raised on a farm on Stein Road in Ann Arbor Township of Washtenaw County, and her family did truck gardening, likewise selling their produce at the Farmers' Market. In 1939, Vivian and John were married. Living on a farm nearly her entire life, Vivian was an active partner with John in the daily work. It was a dairy farm, with potatoes as the cash crop, and farming remained their main income source until the 1960s. John, who was as ingenious and handy as his grandfather, Nathan, modernized the octagon farmhouse, improved the farm buildings, and constructed new ones (described in the "Outbuildings" section above). In the 1940s, the dairy herd was increased to fourteen cows, and they were pastured on a field just east of the house. John and Vivian purchased a forty-acre parcel from John's sister, located on the corner of Earhart and Eight Mile Roads. It was "mucky" land, and once John drained it, it provided fertile soil for potatoes, corn, and hay. John and Vivian's two children, Bob and Marilyn, were born in the 1940s and grew up in the octagon house.

Besides a new family, other changes occurred in the Devereaux household in the next decades. Asbestos cement siding was put on over the tulip-tree clapboard in the early 1940s. Up until 1946, the house had no plumbing other than a well in the basement that went to a pitcher pump in the kitchen. Pipe was a difficult commodity to come by because World War II had just ended. However, with a plumber's assistance, John installed a bathroom where the pantry had been. A bathtub was ordered from Montgomery Ward, and it came by freight. When the box was opened, the Devereauxs found that the bathtub drain was on the wrong side. Unable to return it, they had to make do with this inconvenience.

Further modernizations occurred to the octagon house in the 1940s. Originally, the basement had an earthen floor, which was optimal for storing the farm's cash crop of potatoes. In the late 1940s, the kerosene water heater broke. It had been located on the east side of the basement. Subsequently, it was replaced with an electric water heater located near the stairs.

In 1957, the original summer kitchen, which had been functioning as a woodshed, was removed and replaced with a utility room.

The basement floor was paved over with concrete in the 1960s. In the center of the basement was a space that had been occupied by a pole with shelves on it to set pans for milk and cheese-making. The house had been heated by a wood-burning stove with a central chimney that went from the parlor up through the ceiling where it passed through the upstairs front bedroom, and from there through the cupola roof. The stove and chimney were removed once the furnace was installed in the 1980s.

The interior walls on the first and second floors were originally covered with hair plaster and painted over with calcimine. The plaster began crumbling and the calcimine was difficult to repaint because it peels, so John undertook the painstaking task of replacing the plaster with insulation and drywall. This was quite laborious, particularly in some of the second floor rooms where the ceiling is curved and irregularly shaped. In one of these rooms, a segment of the original plaster wall remains.

Originally, the flooring was maple on the first and second floors, except for the kitchen which was of ash. John put new oak flooring in the parlor.