Harrison showed Pillot his sketches, and Pillot picked out the octagon-shaped cage. Or, to hear Pillot tell it, he was the one to suggest the shape. "I said, 'We need an octagon,'" Pillot recalled.

These architectural plans were also a transparent ... octagon houses built between the mid 19th century and 1920. For the most part, these houses are architectural curiosities, just an unusual ...