The Octagon House

Colonel John Tayloe III, one of the richest planters in Virginia, commissioned the house in 1798 from William Thornton, the amateur architect who designed the U.S. Capitol. Built on an awkward triangular lot a few blocks from the President’s House, it was completed in 1801 with a round entrance tower and angled wings; despite its name, it has six sides, not eight. Tayloe’s wealth came from more than 500 enslaved people on thirteen plantations in Virginia and Maryland, and about ten enslaved people lived and worked at the Octagon year-round – among them Archy Nash, Tayloe’s manservant; the chambermaids Winney Jackson and Betty; the cook Billy; and coachmen Harry Jackson, Gowen and Henry Jackson – with more arriving when the family came north for the winter.

After British troops burned the White House in August 1814, the Tayloes lent the Octagon to President James Madison and Dolley Madison, who lived there for about six months. On 17 February 1815, in the round upstairs study, Madison signed the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. That winter Dolley Madison complained in a letter that their servants were constantly sick in the damp cellar where they were housed. The American Institute of Architects rented the house in 1898 and bought it in 1902; it is now the Octagon Museum, run by the Architects Foundation, which interprets the lives of the enslaved household alongside those of the famous residents.

The ghost stories are old. The earliest, already in print by 1874, says that after John Tayloe’s death in 1828 the house’s servants’ bells rang by themselves – bells that had been answered by the enslaved staff. In 1888 a dozen men spent a night in the house to test its reputation and came away frightened. The most famous tale, that two of Tayloe’s daughters fell to their deaths from the spiral staircase after quarrels with their father, first appeared in print in 1908 – and historians have shown that no Tayloe daughter died in the house. Later additions include Dolley Madison announced by the scent of lilacs and a gambler shot on the third floor, a story that first surfaced in a 1912 newspaper feature.

Stories describe servants’ bells ringing on their own, footsteps and a candle’s glow on the stairs, a figure at the foot of the spiral staircase, a woman in period dress with the scent of lilacs in the hall, and unexplained sounds from the third floor.

The oval spiral staircase, the entrance hall, the third floor and the basement, where the kitchen and enslaved staff quarters were.

The Octagon is a fixture of Washington ghost tours and Halloween features, often billed as the most haunted house in the capital. It is also a National Historic Landmark and a showcase of Federal-period architecture.