Have You Seen this Stunning Octagonal Landmark House in Westchester County?

  |  February 1, 2017

Via Wikipedia

Just when we think we’ve seen it all in the Hudson Valley, we stumble upon something surprising. This week’s surprise came in the form of an octagonal dome house, built in 1860, in the Westchester County town of Irvington.

While octagonal houses are common around the area, the Amour-Stiner House’s dome makes it a bit of an anamoly. This sentence in the Wiki entry about the house caught our intrigue: “It is known that other domed octagonal residences were built in the United States, but it is unknown if any of them still exist.” So, of course we looked it up. And you know what? I think it might be right. We found domes. We found octagons. We did not find any that resemble the Amour-Stiner’s unusual dome shape. Incidentally, the dome came about twelve years after the rest of the home’s completion.

Amour-Stiner, AKA Carmer Octagon House, was originally financed by Paul J. Amour although the name of the home’s actual architect has been lost to the mists of time. Joseph Stiner added its distinctive dome between 1872 and 1876, and it remains a private residence to this day (in other words, don’t go trespassing). The owner, Joseph Pell Lombardi, saved the Victorian from demolition and completely restored the property, adhering to a strict rule of only using period details. Look at these interior pictures.

The dome’s previous owner Carl Carmer asserted that the house was haunted. If so, those are some lucky, lucky ghosts. See more of Lombardi’s work on the octagon here.

About Kandy Harris

Kandy is a writer and musician/music teacher living in Saugerties, NY.

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