sunflower house

A mid-century round house in Madison, Wisconsin, has just hit the market –

Built in 1952-53 by architect James Dresser, who studied with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, the house has a central skylight, curved hallways, cork walls, a mix of wood and cork floors, and a round brick fireplace. It was for some years the architect’s family home.

Structurally, the house is a concrete shell built on a radial framework of curved steel beams. Stylistically, it’s both circular and angular, its round form accented by a series of triangular windows.

The innovative house was featured in a November 1952 edition of Popular Mechanics, which said, in something of rhetorical flourish, that “cobwebs will never collect in the corners” of the new house because “there aren’t any corners.”

r and r in the round

Still looking for a summer holiday escape? There are round houses for rent in vacation spots around the world. Were it not for pressing work deadlines and a depleted bank account, I might run away to this vintage gem in Desert Hot Springs, California.

I could also be tempted to spend time at this northern Scotland stone cottage, this solar-powered Hawaiian home, this mid-century jewel overlooking a river in Oregon, this Balinesian villa, this wine-drenched Sonoma County retreat, and this super-cool futuro spaceship in Wisconsin.

And at $75 a night — or better yet, $500 a month — I might just visit this cheerful and eccentric New Mexico house and not leave.

two fine cheeses

Built in the 1930s, the Martin Zech house near Sauk City, Wisconsin, is a two-story wood house with a cupola –

A columnist with the Wisconsin State Journal described its idiosyncratic style in April 1946:

“The Zech house is absolutely round … not octagonal … and the second story is somewhat smaller in circumferance than the first so that, from the distant road, it appears to be two fine cheeses of different sizes set one on top of the other.  Inside the rooms are pie-shaped, except that the tip of each is cut off by a small round central hallway.”

“Mr. Zech built it that way, he said, simply because he liked it that way, and the idea was original with him.”

A recent photo shows it looking much the same.