The Terrell Octagon House

The town of Terrell, Texas takes its name from Robert A. Terrell, a pioneer settler. A distinctive home is said to have been built for him in the eighteen sixties, an octagon-shaped house, one of the very few of its kind still standing in Texas.

The octagon house style had a brief moment of popularity in mid-nineteenth-century America, championed by phrenologist Orson Fowler, who argued the shape was more efficient and let in more light. Terrell's version survived while most did not. Since eighteen ninety-seven the property has been home to a school, first Toon College and now Southwestern Christian College.

Today it stands as a rare architectural relic of a short-lived national design trend that Texas's frontier settlers briefly embraced.