The Round House is a cylindrical wood-frame residential structure at 36 Atherton Street in the Spring Hill

Spring Hill, Somerville, Massachusetts

Spring Hill is the name of a ridge in the central part of the city of Somerville, Massachusetts, and the neighborhood that sits atop it. It runs northwest to southeast, roughly bounded by Somerville Avenue, Elm Street, Willow Avenue, Highland Avenue, and School Street...

 neighborhood of Somerville

Somerville, Massachusetts

Somerville is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, located just north of Boston. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 75,754 and was the most densely populated municipality in New England. It is also the 17th most densely populated incorporated place in...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, USA. It was built in 1856 by hardware manufacturer Enoch Robinson, and is considered an offshoot of the Octagon House

Octagon house

Octagon houses were a unique house style briefly popular in the 1850s in the United States and Canada. They are characterised by an octagonal plan, and often feature a flat roof and a veranda all round...

 style popularized by phrenologist Orson Fowler.

The exterior of the Round House features two flush stories, with a third stepped back behind a series of battlements and embrasure

Embrasure

In military architecture, an embrasure is the opening in a crenellation or battlement between the two raised solid portions or merlons, sometimes called a crenel or crenelle...

s. Inside, the three-story structure contains a central rotunda

Rotunda (architecture)

A rotunda is any building with a circular ground plan, sometimes covered by a dome. It can also refer to a round room within a building . The Pantheon in Rome is a famous rotunda. A Band Rotunda is a circular bandstand, usually with a dome...

 topped with a glass skylight, with interconnected rooms branching off on each level. There are 4 rooms on the first floor, 6 rooms on the 2nd floor and another 4 rooms on the third floor.

In the early 2000s, the privately-owned house was unoccupied, its windows removed to the interior of the house, and the openings are covered with plywood. Its ornamentation was largely removed, and all of the ceilings were severely damaged from water. In a 1986 restoration program, students from Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

's North Bennet Street School did a small amount of work rehabilitating the building's exterior, but the project fell apart and the house remained in a state of decay.

Historic Massachusetts (now Preservation MASS) placed the building on its list of Endangered Historic Resources for 1997.

By April, 2007, the Round House had been purchased by a local man who is also president of a general contracting firm. Signs placed on the property in early January 2008 advertised nearby Diamond Edge Construction, and the thick brush filling the yard was largely removed. According to a letter from Brandon Wilson, executive director of the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission, the building and property would be completely restored and would function as a single family residence when complete.

External links

• Article with historic floor plans, sections, and photographs of the original house

• http://www.erbutler.com/?ktext=328 Image from a 1915 postcard of The Round House