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Hey, i think u posted that before i edited Octagon House to make it more clearly only a disambiguation page, and before i pasted all of its entries here. This page should always reflect every octagon house on that page (but the reverse is not true, because this page may have many more houses that do not have "octagon" in their name. How is this now?
Oh, how should this list be organized, alphabetically by name of house?
Oh, insert a "date built" column early in the sequence. Perhaps it should best be presented in order by date built, giving a historical sweep perspective. A nice list-article using that presentation order, for example, is List of Aar bridges in Berne, which I noticed in wp:Peer Review yesterday. doncram (talk) 02:12, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All this seems to be going in the right direction but Clairisophic is right, these lists need to decide what they are for and make that, and the connection between the lists, very clear. Otherwise people will muddle the issue by adding to the lists at random. I might have a go at this later, but first here are my thoughts for comment.
Octagon House (disambiguation) first. Part of a consistent structure for NRHP articles - everything on the list should be registered with NRHP, red links to encourage completeness, by definition everything would be in the USA. The explanation of the page needs to be all together at the top of the article, and no need for 'United States' header.
This page: Can cover all octagon houses (provided they are notable) - worldwide in theory, there are a few in Canada at least. In particular the list can cover any that are not on the NRHP (there must be some?). All the octagon houses covered by Wikipedia may be a good approach - with red links only where they don't belong on the disambiguation page?
Finally, Octagon house has a gallery which was all the examples I could find on Commons. Really there is no longer any need for a list of examples as well?
A table is a lot of work, probably a list is useful enough. Listing by state is a good idea as that is the information most reliably available?
(Note: I put this beak in, because I'm having trouble trying to figure who said what and when.) This really isn't the places for comments on Octagon House (disambiguation), but since they were placed here, I will reply. While a disambig page may be primarily for US NRHP places, it is my experience that other places, both US and foreign, can and do get added. My experience has shown that US architectural styles can and do cross the border into Canada. For instance there are at least two Carpenter Gothic-style churches in British Columbia. This is the reason for putting ==United States== in. Also it marks the territory so to speak to prevent editors from outside the US from trying to change our disambiguation naming patterns which differ from those in use in the UK. Most present or former Commonwealth countries tend to follow UK practices, so I've experienced an NZ editor trying to change the name of a US NRHP. The dablinks at the top should be be brief, concise and in one paragraph, not two or three, which obscures the article lead sentence which also should be brief and to the point, e.g.
Octagon House, or Octagonal House, etc., can refer to:
Also the links among these articles should be be reciprocal, i.e. dablinks from the other two should point to this one. That's all I have for now. clariosophic (talk) 22:36, 16 June 2008 (UTC) sp clariosophic (talk) 22:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't see this comment here until now, but in Talk:Octagon House (disambiguation) Clariosophic and i seem to have settled out what are the roles for these three articles. Restating and commenting a bit further in response to ProfDEH's notes above, i see them as follows:
Octagon house -- descriptive article, which can include a gallery and/or a list of examples, but which cannot accept reader contributions of every octagon house they take a picture of. I leave it to the editors/"owners" of the article to decide whether to keep a short list of examples, or just have a gallery, or whatever.
List of octagon houses -- list-article which can grow to include hundreds and hundreds of examples, every house that is notable enough for a Wikipedia article, world-wide. This list can include red-links, but only if there is evidence (to be stated in the description column) that a given house is notable. Every NRHP octagon house can be listed, because NRHPs have documentation and are wiki-notable. It is a lot of work, but i want to help develop this as a table.
Octagon House (disambiguation) -- disambiguation for all places named Octagon House or Octagonal House, whether NRHP or not. Can include redlinks i suppose, but all the NRHP ones can get blue-linked by creating articles, in not very much time. If people add a lot of non-notable ones as red-links, that can be discussed and cut off, with direction to people to contribute to "List of octagon houses" instead, where notability can be decided/managed more easily using description column in table. Shouldn't be a problem.
Presumably the whole lot needs to go into all the separate articles as well as the lists, so there is proper cross-referencing? Obviously with local variations as necessary. I've done this on Octagon house to try it out.
I didn't follow what you meant here, until i saw the whole list added into a "See also" section in one or another of the articles. Actually, I think we do not want this, because I believe we never want to refer regular readers to disambiguation pages, as if they are regular, reading pages. There is the "for other uses" or whatever at the top of "Octagon house" article which does provide disambiguation link. It makes sense to me to include "List of octagon houses" and "List of octagonal buildings and structures", meant to be reader articles, in a See also section, though.
Also, we probably want to rename "Octagon Barn" to "Octagon Barn (disambiguation)" and so on for all these that are disambig pages. doncram (talk) 14:37, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Let's stick to this article, please, but regarding the others, please don't go sticking disambiguation after them. There's no reason to. The (disambiguation) should only be added when there is a main article by the same name. Fo most NRHP disambig articles, there is not a main article. Also I don't agree that general readers should not be aware of disambig pages. clariosophic (talk) 14:58, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see much point in adding the barns and schoolhouses to List of octagonal buildings and structures, expect for a general reference. Each of these can support its own small article. Like the houses, they seem to be confined to North America. There may also be enough to do a List of North American octagon buildings or some such for the other nonresidential ones. clariosophic (talk) 16:52, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Check out the new draft table, with just 2 entries so far. Try out the "Map of all coordinates", which takes you to a google map showing the 2 entries. You can zoom in, and switch to satellite view, and then you can see the octagon shape of either of the houses! I think that is neat.... doncram (talk) 06:07, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Very good. I hope you have time to work through the whole thing? The map is excellent. My only reservation is how user friendly the table format may be for contributors, some will undoubtedly make a mess. A simple list is much more foolproof. On balance though I think that is outweighed by the advantages. ProfDEH (talk) 07:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Satellite view is available for most of these houses in the Google maps companion (click on "Map of all coordinates" to see). For many, the latitute and longitude coordinates are precise, and land right on the octagon. For others, like McElroy Octagon House, at 2645 Gough Street in San Francisco, the coordinates are slightly off, although you can find the octagon nearby (a little to the left, for this one). I wonder, how get the exactly correct coordinates out of Google, to adjust the coordinates reported in the list-article and in the house article? Either way, though, it is neat to be able to see the octagons directly from the sky. doncram (talk) 19:09, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The http://www.octagon.bobanna.com/ inventory of octagon houses compiled by RVKLINE, which is now an external link from this list-article, is a great source. It's worth linking to its subpages for each state, from each individual octagon house article. Probably for most octagon house articles there is some useful info to add into the article, too. I saw this linked from the Herkimer County, New York octagon house, article created and link added by Clariosophic. doncram (talk) 16:40, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if we can confirm that we have all of the NRHPs that are octagon houses, and i believe we have almost all of them now, but we can still try to find some more.
Clariosophic has already identified all the NRHP octagon houses with "octagon" or "octagonal" in their name, and has created articles for all that needed it. However, there may be others, besides those we already have, which are octagon houses but don't have octagon in their name.
I searched the NRIS MPS search site for "octagon" and find no covers on the octagon topic.
I searched the NRIS for architect = Orson Fowler, and found just one listing, Capt. Rodney J. Baxter House for which i am creating an article, and I will add mention of it.
For many of the octagon houses in NRIS, there is "Octagon mode" mentioned in the architectural style. I don't see how to search on this within the NRIS system. I wonder if there is a way. Another way to do this would be to use a smart google search to find "octagon mode" in any of the NRHP.com pages. I don't know how to set up a smart google search for that, however. Any ideas? doncram (talk) 20:03, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
yikes, Elkman's edit to the article indicates there are at least 113, based on search for "octagon mode" within his download of the NRIS database. i asked at his talkpage for him to provide a table or list of them all. at any rate, we know that the 50 we have are not comprehensive. Also, there are some, like the Barnstable one i recently added, that do not indicate "octagon mode" in the NRIS system, tho they are octagonal. doncram (talk) 22:56, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unless I'm mistaken, some of the images on the gallery in Octagon house are not on the list yet - Wallingford, Connecticut and Circleville, Ohio. The Akron house might be the same as the Rich-Twinn Octagon House but needs checking.
I think the examples are redundant there now. At some point I will change the Octagon house image gallery to illustrate different architectural types. The list is going now. ProfDEH (talk) 09:03, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The gallery captions are "The M.M. Crites Octagon House in Circleville, Ohio (built 1855-56)" and "The octagon house, Wallingford, Connecticut (built 1850s)". Neither appear to be NRHP-listed. If you could create an article for either of them, I would be happy for them to be added to the List of octagon houses. The Crites one may be the Gregg House (Crite family farm) one mentioned in Bobanna octagon houses website. That website is an okay source, I suppose, though it is informal. doncram (talk) 14:23, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Many NRHP houses were found by selecting "Octagon mode" and selecting wiki-markup, at Elkman special architecture specific query. This list provides a count of the 81 NRHP entries in the table:
Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson's private retreat, near Lynchburg, Virginia
Clapp Octagon House, 62 Lighthouse Avenue, St. Augustine, Florida, built 1880.
We own an Octagon in Truro, Massachusetts. Address is 9 Corn Hill Landing, Truro, MA 02666. It is relatively new, built in 1983 (I think). I have photos of it new, and today. How do I add to the list? RobtheScot (talk) 15:27, 15 August 2022 (UTC) robin mcmillan[reply]
Richard Peacon House, Key West, Florida, 712 Eaton Street, 1885, contributing property in Key West Historic District. Owned by Calvin Klein in the 1980s. May be the southernmost octagon house in the continental United States.
Hey doncram and clario - I noticed your work on this list. If you're looking for info to flesh out the info for the DYK, check the NRHP doc for David Van Gelder House. It has info about this guy Orson Squire Fowler who made the octagon house popular in the 19th century. He was also a phrenologist. That might work into the hook: "....that the octagon house, such as those listed in the List of octagon houses, was made popular in the 19th century by phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler?"
Thanks, the NRHP doc for David Van Gelder house is helpful and I am using now as a reference in this article. It includes mention that Fowler's book was first published in 1848, which i wanted to use elsewhere, too. doncram (talk) 16:07, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe that would have worked better as the hook. Big whoop, we've gotten 305 page views up to now, counting our own... and i've been there at least 100 times... :(.
I was just looking to see if someone had created an article for this yet. It's pretty cool looking,[1] but maybe doesn't fit the category. Did someone make an executive decision to omit it?--Appraiser (talk) 12:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, neat pic there. IANAE (i am not an executive), but i chose to omit it temporarily as the List is up for DYK right now, in cohort of articles created 5 days ago. Mention of its existence was added very late. So, I put it in a list above, here on Talk page, to be added later. I would wait a day or two until after the DYK appears to address it. Also, i thot it was mentioned as being NRHP, but i think i looked in Elkman generator and did not find it (not sure). Anyhow, feel free to start an article on it! doncram (talk) 13:02, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The picture link is from [2] which has pictures of most (all?) of the Wisconsin octagonal houses. Too bad they're not PD. Yesterday I was working on creating articles for the Wisconsin ones, but I ran out of time. I'll do this one now.--Appraiser (talk) 13:24, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Great that you created the article. Let's NOT add it to the list-article right now, as it would change all the totals and possibly mess up the DYK, being considered by DYK editors right now. Thanks! doncram (talk) 18:51, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the impetus for getting this article in decent shape in time for the DYK, but I think at some (later) point the scope of the article should be addressed. After looking at Robert Kline' and Dale Travis' lists, it's clear that the number of surviving examples is well over 1000. Most are arguably non-notable, with those two sources (and possibly Schmidt's book (which Kline says is full of errors)) the only likely references available to us. Perhaps the article should be limited to only NRHP houses, which is essentially what we have now.--Appraiser (talk) 18:36, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The U.S. table now has one non-NRHP house. If there are only a 1,000 or so in the world, maybe it should be argued that they are each individually notable. For here, we can list houses whether they are wikipedia notable, individually (that is, whether there is enough documentation for a separate wikipedia article that would survive Articles-for-deletion processes). I'd like to include any houses we can get locations and pictures for, at least, in tables.
We can start a table on Canada already, too, using the one Canadian registered historic site one that we have an article for already. By the way, I have pics of a couple of octagon cottages on Mississippi Lake in Ontario, one with a connection to a big-time Canadian war hero, that i think even Kline and Travis don't know about yet....
About the Kline and Travis sources, I think those are great and they really complement what we can do here. They can and do include fairly informal information, including rumorsstatements about who might have lived somewhere and so on, some of which ismay not be encyclopedic and verifiable enough to use here, but which is helpful information. If Kline and/or Travis assert that an octagon house exists, then we can rely upon that and include the house in a list. It would help, though, if Kline and Travis would give names of the individual houses, so we can refer to them. It is more helpful than i have ever realized, that the U.S. NRHP program attaches names to houses, even if they are making them up. Once a name is made up, though, it is the NRHP name for the house. If, say, Kline would name a given house, we could use that name to refer to the house, too. For this encyclopedia though, i feel very uncomfortable about ourselves composing up names based upon Kline or Travis's descriptions, because we have an obligation here not to perform original research. Cheers, doncram (talk) 20:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Revised my comment above. I had thought there were statements in the Kline and/or Travis sources of the form "so and so reported that the house was once blue", in which the authors would convey assertions which could probably never be verified. However, further reviewing the sources right now, I cannot find any such statements.
Also, in situations where there is no title of a house apparent in the Kline and Travis sources, I suppose we could form descriptive names ourselves to use as wikipedia article titles. For example, I suggest "Octagon house on Salt Rising Road (Little Genesee, New York)" could be used as a name for one mentioned in Kline's New York / Alleghany County list. I think that somewhat wordy, lower case descriptive phrases can be used in wikipedia article titles, and such wordy phrases are preferred over creating any new proper noun phrase that is not in common use, per wp:neologisms and other wikipedia naming convention resources. doncram (talk) 17:08, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just passing by to assess the article for WP Architecture, very interesting but confusing! Based on the other Lists I have come across, I would suggest the majority of the information in the introduction is better suited for Octagon house and the intro is instead restricted to providing enough information to understand the List's scope and purpose. Sionk (talk) 02:12, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I just fixed the geocoding coordinates for the Feusier & McElroy Houses here in San Francisco. They were both off by a few blocks. I spot checked a few others in the list. Some were accurate, but others were not quite right. The ones that appeared to be off were also on the West Coast (Washington state, Los Angeles and Oregon). Where did the coordinates come from in this list? I wonder if there's a systematic problem with the coordinates for West Coast locations? --Sanfranman59 (talk) 01:47, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I just checked a few in the middle of the country. Those I checked in Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa seemed about right, but the coordinates for the Dr. Nathan and Lula Cass House in Cameron, Texas are in the middle of the cemetery. The address looks to be about a half-mile away as the crow flies. --Sanfranman59 (talk) 01:58, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Thanks! I had noted above, in section "Exactness of latitude and longitude coordinates" that McElroy longitude was slightly off. Isn't it neat, that for octagonal houses, that we can find the houses exactly, and see whether the given coords are exactly right or not? The source is NRIS, via individual house reports out of Elkman NRHP generator, converted by me into coordinate sets in the list-article. I believe that many of the coordinate sets were figured out historically by National Register or local state hist dept staff, tracing out locations on USGS contour map quadrants. Quality-wise, i think the info is pretty good. For List of RHPs in Chicago there were just 3 coordinate sets, out of about 300, that appeared off.
Say, how do you get the correct coordinates? I know i once could get them out of Google, when looking down in satellite view, but i can't figure out how to get them out of Google right now. Anyhow, thanks for fixing the CA ones already. doncram (talk) 02:00, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I missed your note above. I get the coordinates by centering the map over the desired location, clicking the "Link to this page" link (above the map to the right), cursor over to the coordinates in the "Paste link in email or IM" blank and copy/paste them. It's kind of a pain and I'm guessing there's an easier way to get accurate coordinates, but since I've found this to work pretty well, I live with it. Anyone else out there have a suggestion? --Sanfranman59 (talk) 02:14, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What I do is--using the new Google maps, find your location, then right-click and select "what's here?". You'll see coordinates listed in decimal form in the window at the upper left. Similar process in Classic Google Maps. SeattleRetro (talk) 18:58, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal to spinoff Canada section. & rename this article
Why? The current article size is 37,920 bytes, which leaves room for a lot of expansion. I'd certainly be happy to see a table of the Canadian houses, but why not just go ahead and expand (and table-ize) the Canada section here? I rather like having an international list-article, too, having worked on perhaps too many U.S.-centric lists, myself. Also, if article size were over 100kb and size was an issue, it would probably be more appropriate to split out some large sections to new article, leaving "Main" links to them in the this list, keeping this list in its current name. doncram (talk) 22:10, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's OK with me. I started one article today in my sanbox and will be doing others. I think we agree that the present section on Canada needs improvement. I have a hunch that there may be octagon houses in the western provinces also. clariosophic (talk) 04:48, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is a third octagon house in Suffolk County, NY, specifically located at 1769 Brentwood Road, in Brentwood [1]. Does anyone have more information on this house? Would this be a valid entry for this list? The only thing I can find about it on the Interwebs is this NY Times letter to the editor from 1985 [2]. If no one knows anything about this house, I'd gladly take a trip over to my local library and see what I could dig up. I also noticed a NY State "this is a significant historical thing" sign in front of it, which I could examine more closely (rather than try to read it as I drove by, like I did this morning). Thanks. dmnapolitano (talk) 14:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, nice job documenting that the house is octagonal (per Google satellite view) and historic (purportedly built in 1769 per the letter to the NYTimes editor). Actually, for the house to have been built in 1769, it would predate Orson Squire Welles and all the other houses on this list. The letter to the editor mentions the house being covered in Legacies of the Octagon Movement article in the NYT from March 24, 1985, which should provide further documentation (and I would certainly like to see for what it provides about other houses, too). Yes, the house certainly would be a welcome addition to this list, and further it would be "wikipedia-notable" and justify having its own article. Is there a name used currently or historically for the house, or should it perhaps be called Octagon House at 1769 Brentwood Road (Brentwood, New York)? Thanks for bringing it up, and please do follow up here. doncram (talk) 18:49, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You know, when I lived on Long Island, I rarely ever used Brentwood Road, so this house is completley new to me. Now I wish I knew more about it. While we're at it, what's with the technical difficulties on this page? I tried to fix the one in Griggsville, Illinois, and this site isn't letting me do it. ----DanTD (talk) 13:15, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I remember seeing an octagon house somewhere in southern New Jersey, perhaps in Atlantic County, but a long time ago. Sorry, I don't really remember more than that. Perhaps someone else can find it. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:55, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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In the main table of octagon houses, the first listing is for the famous Octagon House in Washington DC. But this is a misnomer. So, should this house actually be in the table? See the Wikipedia entry for that house, which explains that no one knows why it is called an octagon, though there are a couple of speculations for why this is.
Since the vast majority (in fact I only know of the DC house as a misnomer) of houses in this list actually are octagonal, the question of whether to leave the DC house in here is worth resolving. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johngillis (talk • contribs) 14:48, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
I agree with you. I cannot understand why this is included in this list.[reply]
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