exuberantly round

A novelty style round house in Eads, Colorado, was recently entered on the National Register of Historic Places. Named the Crow-Hightower House after two of its early owners, the house has a conical entrance, a crenellated cornice, walls of contrasting brick, and an “exuberant” circular form. Here is the house in 1955, a few years after it was built –

The NRHP registration form includes historical information about round houses in the US, noting that they are relatively rare both in Colorado and nationally. Apparently the builder of the Crow-Hightower House, Warren A. Portrey, had previously built another round house just outside of Eads, and went on to build two more circular structures in Oregon.

Portrey’s son Ron recalled that Portrey, who was always interested in new things, was eager to build more round houses. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get people interested in them because they were “not conventional” and “not the same style everybody else was building.” Portrey built the two Oregon structures — a house and a workshop — for himself.

round home moored to a hill

Under the title “Round Home Moored to a Hill,” Life magazine dedicated six pages to a Boulder, Colorado house designed by architect Charles Haertling in 1964.  Neighbors had previously voiced vehement opposition to the house, sending a letter of protest during its construction that complained of the house’s “sheer grossness” and predicted “a definite though incalculable loss of property values.”

After the house was built, Life relates, “most of the neighbors apologized.”

The owners “wound up with a round house partly because their architect, Charles Haertling, is an imaginative man but more because — as they found to their surprise — they could get more space for their money in a round house than in a square one.”

round house rentals

Curious about what it’s like to live in a round house?  Try one out — there are circular homes available as vacation rentals in Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, Hawaii, Arizona, Texas, and New York, as well as in Costa Rica, Jamaica, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Honduras, the Bahamas, the Gambia, the Virgin Islands, Baja California, Mexico, and Jalisco, Mexico.