Long Island Dirt:
Recovering our Buried Past
by Allison McGovern

William Jones (W. J.) Weeks was born in 1821 to James H. and Eleanor Jones Weeks. As a young child in 1828, he moved with his family to Millville (which would later be renamed Yaphank) where his father had purchased extensive cordwood lands and developed several businesses. William was an only child, and he grew up within a setting of business and industry, of family and community, where his father and his uncle, William Sidney Smith, were involved in several businesses together. William Jones Weeks attended various schools in the region and worked as a civil surveyor before leaving Long Island for Yale University in 1840. While at Yale, William kept close contact with his parents through letters, some of which are preserved at the Yaphank Historical Society.

When William returned home to Millville from Yale University, he married Mary Croswell. He built an unusual home of octagonal shape around 1849 on the cusp of an architectural craze that impacted New York State in the 1850s. Octagonal houses gained wide-spread popularity in the mid-nineteenth century following the publication of Orson S. Fowler’s The Octagon House: a Home for All which was originally published in 1848, with a second revised edition published in 1853 (McCarley 2005). At that time, Fowler began building his own, grand octagon-shaped house in Fishkill, New York. Dubbed “a home for all,” Fowler stated that the octagon-shaped home was more efficient to build, heat, and clean than traditional homes. The presence of windows on all sides and the absence of hallways, he argued, brought in fresh air and encouraged healthy living.

A phrenologist, Orson Fowler was a contemporary of important social and medical reformers of the Popular Health Movement and he advocated for a variety of social reforms, including sex education, vegetarianism, and physical fitness. William J. Weeks was also civic-minded and clearly influenced by the Popular Health Movement and modern philosophies of social reform and “clean living.”

The Weeks octagon house was home to William and Mary and their 12 children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. William was a well-read man, and thorough in his documentation. Ten volumes of his personal diaries document his almost daily activities between 1851 and 1871 (Originals are at Queens Borough Public Library, and scans on microfilm are available at the Longwood Library). According to these resources, William was involved in many of his father’s businesses and was informed of his Uncle William Sidney’s affairs as well. William was a “gentleman farmer,” with large landholdings for vegetable crops and wheat in Yaphank, and cordwood harvesting at Wampmissic. He was especially involved with asparagus cultivation. He was also an avid beekeeper who built and sold hives and supplemented his income with surveying work. His agricultural work was regionally known, and he supplied bees and hives to farmers throughout Long Island. He and Mary were vegetarians and consumed no beverages other than water.

A fire destroyed Weeks’s octagon house in the first quarter of the twentieth century, but the granite stone and mortared foundation remain in situ, characterizing the heart of the archaeological site. The Weeks octagon house site represents the material traces of a mid to late nineteenth century Victorian household in New York and represents a context that allows us to test the practical application of some of Fowler’s ideals, to determine, to what extent, William and his family were both influenced by them and modified them to accommodate their family size and daily experiences. Archaeological investigations were designed to document the layout of the house and identify the placement of key utilities and activity spaces for comparison with a descendant sketch map of the house layout and construction, as well as comparison with Orson Fowler’s published construction plans.

While historical examples of octagon-shaped houses certainly pre-date the mid-nineteenth century, Orson Fowler can certainly be considered responsible for a revival of this architectural trend in the 1850s. He frequently travelled for speaking engagements at which he sold his plans for octagon houses. On Long Island, octagon-shaped houses were built in Oyster Bay, Patchogue, Brentwood, and Mattituck. Octagon-shaped school buildings were also constructed in Yaphank and Brentwood.

There is also a very curious connection between the presence of octagon-shaped houses, social reform, and radical politics. There are apparently strong links between utopians’ ideas about architecture and causes, such as phrenology, spiritualism, anarchism, land reform, abolitionism, vegetarianism, and spelling and writing reform. The material remains of these ideals are apparent in the construction of geometric residences and planned communities, such as octagonal houses, hexagonal planning, and even streets grids. It is interesting that so many of these features are prominent markers of Modern Times—the mid-nineteenth century utopian community that was established in Brentwood. There, the original street grid as well as the home of Josiah Warren and two nineteenth-century octagonal structures remain as material traces of the ideals associated with Modern Times.

In both Brentwood and Yaphank, there appears to be a relationship between octagon houses and later institutions of social reform. At Yaphank, Weeks was instrumental in creating the Suffolk County Farm and Alms House. More than 50 years after Modern Times had dissolved, Brentwood eventually became home to the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, a characteristic example of institutionalized mental health that came on the heels of Victorian social reform. Differences can also be observed at each of this communities in terms of settlement structure: Modern Times was focused on freedom through land tenure, whereas Yaphank remained tied to ideals of the landed gentry, and the maintenance of wealth through real estate. This is a significant difference that can be seen in the landscape around the Weeks octagon house and will continue to be explored through archaeology.

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