- The Armour-Stiner Octagon House is a fairytale mansion just 18 miles north of Manhattan.
- Frozen in time to the early 1870s, it was designed as a summer and weekend escape from New York.
- The residence, once owned by a coffee merchant who rivaled Starbucks, can be privately toured.
In the mid-19th century, the concept of octagon houses was all the rage among fashionable Americans.
Its popularity was attributed to a best-selling 1848 book by Orson Squire Fowler, a phrenologist, sexologist, and amateur architect, called "The Octagon House: A Home For All."
Fowler championed eight-sided houses because they received twice as much light as a traditional four-sided property and allowed owners to view the grounds from all angles.
The Armour-Stiner Octagon House in the New York City suburb of Irvington-on-Hudson, around 18 miles from the northern tip of Manhattan, is a prime example of the genre.
Unusually for an octagon house, it features a giant dome, added by its second owner, Joseph H. Stiner, a wealthy tea and coffee merchant who bought the property in 1872.
The result is a fairytale residence that its current owner, Joseph Pell Lombardi, lovingly restored, beginning in 1978. The preservation architect purchased it from the National Trust for Historic Preservation for $75,000 (equivalent to $387,300 today), with certain conditions, including stabilizing the structure and dome.
In his book, "The Armour-Stiner (Octagon) House," Lombardi said his goal was "to hold together the fragile exotic beauty of this lyrical home."
The 8,000-square-foot property, which was restored to its original 1870s glory, is open to the public through private tours that must be reserved in advance.
Take a look inside the residence while it is decked out for a Victorian-style Christmas.
The Armour-Stiner House was built in the form of an ancient classical temple.
The octagonal mansion began life as a flat-roofed, two-story building with a raised basement commissioned by New York City banker Paul J. Armour.
Armour died in 1866, just six years after buying the house. His widow, Rebecca, went on to sell it to Stiner for $27,000 in 1872.
The Hungarian-born businessman, who made his fortune from importing products such as tea, coffee, and cocoa, rebuilt his summer and weekend retreat in the form of an ancient classical temple with more than 20 rooms.
The colonnaded veranda, festooned with festive garlands, is reached by sweeping stairs.
Stiner, a father of six, whose family lived in the house for only 10 years, built the 56-column veranda that surrounds the first story, resembling a fairground carousel.
Guests are greeted by cast-stone lions flanking the sweeping stairs that lead to the structure, which features elaborate gas lamps and a cast-iron railing.
It allows visitors to view the grounds from every perspective, offering sun and shade depending on where they choose to sit and the time of day.
The tour begins in the entry hall, where the walls are adorned with silver leaf and stenciled decorations.
Tour guide Kate Mincer, who greeted our group of four at the door, explained how Stiner turned the house into a "temple of whimsy" by bringing in interesting motifs and designs from around the world.
The walls of the entry hall are adorned with silver leaf and stenciled decorations in trompe l'oeil neo-Baroque frames.
Mincer also highlighted the miniature antique Christmas tree, made from goose feathers dyed green, with traditional, hand-blown glass ornaments from Germany.
Mrs. Stiner's salon features a bay window, providing the perfect setting for a stately Christmas tree.
Stiner's wife, Hannah, impressed visitors with her immaculate salon, which featured a bay window that flooded the room with light.
"Hannah's era was the lead-up to the really showy time period of the Gilded Age," Mincer said. "But this room has the kind of detail you would see in opera houses in Europe, not necessarily in private summer cottages."
The space features a parlor suite by the renowned 19th-century furniture maker John Jelliff, which includes two sofas, an armchair, and an armless chair designed to accommodate ladies' skirts.
Many of the decorations on the Christmas tree were handmade in the Dresden style.
For the holiday season, the Christmas tree in the salon is covered in colorful ornaments, including layered decorations crafted from embossed cardboard, foil, and paper, accented with antique trimmings.
Many were handmade by Jessica Lombardi, the museum director, and a team of docents who copied the Dresden style of ornament making, which originated in Germany in the late 19th century.
Many of the paintings in the salon belong to the Hudson River School of Art.
The Stiners, who eventually moved into the house year-round, supported landscape painters from the 19th-century Hudson River School of Art.
Most of the images are local to Irvington-on-Hudson, with views of the Palisades along the Hudson River and a particularly wide section of the river known as the Tappan Zee.
An oil canvas by Robert Havell Jr. is a 1866 depiction of the nearby Old Dutch Church, made famous by author Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
The sumptuous dining room has a rounded shape.
The dining room is the only room in the Octagon House with a rounded space, inspired by the theme of a Roman temple.
It contains a Renaissance Revival walnut dining table with semi-circular ends, adding an unusual touch.
Each plate on the dining table is set for December 25, 1872.
Museum staff have meticulously set the table for Christmas Day, 1872, the year Stiner bought the property. The dining table features a menu that lists dishes such as roast goose or croquettes wrapped in bacon, finishing with plum pudding.
The silverware is Reed & Barton Roman Medallion 1870s flatware, featuring a Roman centurion's head at its base.
Current owner Joseph Pell Lombardi discovered one of the pieces at the bottom of a dumbwaiter in 1978. It led to a two-decade search to acquire the complete set.
The butler's pantry features a soft copper sink that protects tableware from being broken.
The triangular-shaped pantry includes original cabinets, a dumb waiter, and a soft copper sink, designed to minimize the risk of damage to crockery during the washing up.
The lady's kitchen was the domain of the mistress of the house.
The first-floor kitchen, with its writing desk for planning menus and a cast-iron stove, was designed for the lady of the house, despite the servants she employed.
Mincer explained how, within the era, the writers Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister, Catharine Beecher, suggested that gentlewomen should take an active role in household proceedings.
"Most of the cooking was done elsewhere, but this was Mrs. Stiner's hub," the guide said.
Original Joseph Stiner & Co. Importers' tea and coffee tins are kept in the lady's kitchen.
The kitchen contains a selection of Joseph Stiner & Co. Importers' tea and coffee tins, including one that lists the merchant's chain of shops in Manhattan.
"At the height of his success, Mr. Stiner was basically Starbucks before Starbucks," Mincer joked.
The Stiners used to relax in the sitting room.
The second story of the house was reserved for the Stiner family, who would relax and sleep there. It felt more cozy than downstairs.
The color palettes are softer, but the gasolier in this particular room, the former primary bedroom, is no less ornate.
The striking bedroom has a set of "cottage furniture."
One bedroom visible on the tour has a set of so-called "cottage furniture," made by Hart, Ware & Co. Their designs became a fad in the mid-19th century.
A more affordable type of wood, such as pine, was painted to resemble the look of ebony. The Armour-Stiner Octagon House pieces — including the bed, dresser, and side tables — come with gold filigree and river scenes.
Another interesting detail is the stretch of fabric that conceals the otherwise unattractive mechanism connecting the gasolier to the ceiling.
The curio room is filled with fascinating items, many of which originate from the natural world.
Lombardi turned one of the children's bedrooms into a curio room — basically a home museum — to reflect the Victorian obsession with natural specimens, such as mounted butterflies.
It also houses a 19th-century, patented Wooton desk with numerous drawers and nooks and crannies for ordering and storing items of interest.
The curio room also features a festive display of Victorian-style Christmas cards.
The old-fashioned greeting cards are in the style of the illustrator Louis Prang, who popularized their distribution by mail. He became known as "the father of the American Christmas card."
Many depict flowers such as peonies and roses, while the later versions show wintry scenes trimmed with lace.
"We have images of St. Nicholas wearing purple, green, and brown instead of the iconic red suit," Mincer told our group, adding that Santa Claus had yet to solidify into the familiar character we now know.
A child's bedroom is simpler than the rest of the house.
The solo children's bedroom on the tour is situated on the third floor of the house. It has a homely feel with a spruce floor and porcelain doorknobs.
Old-fashioned toys in the room include a teddy bear and dolls dressed in Victorian attire.
Miniature Pullman trains are displayed along the walls.
Long shelves in the child's bedroom house Lionel train sets dating from 1910, depicting 1870s luxury Pullman passenger cars.
They were collected for display, along with the period lithograph prints of the actual trains, which ran on the Hudson River Railroad and were the height of luxury during the Stiners' time.
The grandly titled Egyptian Revival women's gymnasium/music room features brightly colored decor.
Mincer said the mistress of the house practiced dancing and watercolors in the high-ceilinged room with large, north-facing windows.
It contains a complete Egyptian Revival furniture set created by the prestigious New York manufacturers Pottier & Stymer, who were highly sought after in the 1870s.
The Lombardi family visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art to photograph the company's rare examples of Egyptian Revival art on display. They spent months recreating the designs to fit the suite. Its upholstery was woven in the Aubusson style.
The Egyptian Revival spinet piano dates from the 1870s.
The Egyptian Revival spinet piano brought music to the room. It is adorned with Egyptian hieroglyphics. "The designs weren't accurate, but resembled how people from that era thought they looked," Mincer said.
The table opposite the piano displays a silver menorah on top, reflecting the Stiner's Jewish faith ahead of Hanukkah.
The mansion's lights sparkle at night.
The fourth and fifth floors of the house are off-limits to visitors, partly because the steep stairs don't meet current building codes.
On a previous visit, before the code was introduced, I toured the unpartitioned dance room, which features eight windows and a spiral staircase up to the observatory. It commands beautiful views of the Hudson River.
The holiday tours take place during the day, but it's possible to see the house festively lit up at night from the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail, which borders the property.
I made a quick return visit to see the exterior lights on the night of my tour and was reminded of the splendor inside.
Lombardi certainly stayed true to that ambitious pledge of holding "together the fragile exotic beauty of this lyrical home."
