Most houses stay where they were built. This one didn't take that order. The McElroy Octagon House was built by a wood miller between 1860 and 1861, but it eventually ended up in such a state of neglect that the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in California bought it and moved it across the street in 1951.
Once it landed on its current plot at Gough Street, Warren C. Perry, former Dean of Architecture at UC Berkeley, restored the house. During the restoration, the original layout - which featured two floors of four rooms each with a central winding staircase - was changed to make it a functional event space.
The house has seen some action. It was badly damaged during the 1906 earthquake and it hosted figures like Daniel O’Connell, a co-founder of the Bohemian Club. It is now one of only three octagon houses left in the city.
You can still visit today. It opened as a museum in 1953 and remains a designated landmark. If you want to see where a house went to get a second chance at life, this is the spot.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Kyle McLonely
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