Superior’s octagon house

Housing oddity may be the only one of its kind in northern Wisconsin

By Shelley Nelson snelson@superiortelegram.com

Eight-sided homes became all the rage in the mid1800s after Orson Fowler published “The Octagon House: A Home for All” in 1848. Thousands of homes were built across America with an eight-sided geometric configuration. There’s scarce evidence the trend ever really caught on in northern Wisconsin.

In fact, the octagon house in Superior’s Central Park neighborhood may be the only one built in northern Wisconsin, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Nathan M. Reynolds, a native of New York state where he was an architect and builder, erected the wood-clad octagon house in Central Park between

This undated photo shows the octagonal-shaped home constructed in Central Park in 1890-91. It was once called the Orvald House, named for the family that owned it from 1917 to 1984. (Courtesy of the Douglas County Historical Society collection.)

1890 and 1891, during Superior’s most significant period of growth. Reynolds, who had served in the Civil War, was a partner in Reynolds and Atwood fuel dealers, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Swedish immigrants Mattie and Andrew Lundgren and their eight children lived in the house from 1908 to 1915, and the house was purchased by Ole Orvald in 1917, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. A contractor, Orvald was the first to install electricity in the home.

The home featured a wood-paneled vestibule at the front entrance and an interior spiral staircase rose to the second floor. Another steep stairway rose into the low cupola with small square windows. The cornice of the roof had flat block trim with gables on alternate sides of the roof.

Two of Orvald’s nine children, Everette Orvald and Olive Robb, remembered climbing those steep stairs to the cupola or “widow’s walk,” a feature frequently seen on the eastern seaboard and so named because it was used by the wives of seafaring men to watch for their return, according to a 1973 report in the Evening Telegram.

The house remained with the Orvald family until it was sold to its current owner, Paul Guello, in 1984. u