Home built in 1883 on National Register of Historic Places

Editor’s note: This is the first in a monthly series about entries from Wayne County on the National Register of Historic Places.

If you’ve driven up or down state Route 57 in or out of Orrville, you may have passed the Zimmerman Bury Octagon House, perhaps dozens of times, and not even noticed it. Somewhat obscured by trees, it’s easy enough to miss, despite being about the only thing around.

If you did notice it, there’s a good chance it caught your eye and at least piqued your curiosity a bit, thanks to the building’s unique structure. It is among less than 25 octagon houses in Ohio.

Billed as the only known Queen Ann-style octagonal house with a gabled roof, the 4,000-square-foot, 15-room home is located at 10095 Wadsworth Road (state Route 57), a few hundred feet south of the Circle K and Bauman Orchards Corner Market at the intersection of state Routes 585 and 57. That’s roughly 2 miles northwest of Marshallville. The house was built in 1883. It sits on a property that spans more than 87,000 square feet.

Early on it became a rest stop for weary travelers heading west to seek whatever people were seeking in the formative years of the nation. It was in a similar spirit to what went on in Rittman a century later, eventually inspiring that village’s Sleepwalker Festival.

“In the period of expansion, it was common for travelers to stop for the night and request from the local farms to camp there,” said Gordon Bury, whose family has owned the property for a half-century. “In exchange they would help them with things on the farm.”

The Zimmerman family including Ezekiel II originally emigrated from Switzerland. In 1812 when Ezekiel II was 4 years old, the family, which first settled in Pennsylvania, cleared a spot of land near Pleasant Home Road, just south of where the Octagon House was eventually built. The Zimmermans, who went on to have a lumber business and grow asparagus crops, set up shop in what was then wilderness but what is now Chippewa Township.

The first Zimmermans to make their way to Wayne County actually traveled to here on an elder’s Revolutionary War Grant, Bury said. Eventually, after the War of 1812 died down, the family followed and settled here.

According to the Octagon House website, Ezekiel II married Rachel Ann McLellan, and the two eventually had Ezekiel III in 1848, when the family lived on nearby Pleasant Home Road in Marshallville in a house allegedly part of the Underground Railroad.

The youngest Ezekiel married Frances B. Hess and bought around 100 acres where they eventually built the Octagon House. The young Zimmerman, an avid reader, was educated at the Smithville Academy, according to Bury.

“Not too bad for a local farm boy out in the wilderness,” Bury said.

The house was built for $3,000. It was ultimately passed down to Ernest Zimmerman, the second of five children born to Ezekiel III and Hess. Ernest kept the home until selling it to Bury’s family in 1972.

The home hosted many programs last year in celebration of a half-century of ownership.

“Now we’re going through some updates and registration projects,” Bury said. “We’re getting ready to start on a schedule of programs for the year.”

Among those are murder mystery dinners, Veterans Day programs, and an annual Halloween event in which the entire house and grounds are decorated for the season. The house also is well known for elaborate Christmas décor.

Soon after the Burys took possession — May 1975, to be exact — the Ezekiel B. Zimmerman Octagon House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, as it approached its 100th birthday. It is one of 21 properties and districts in Wayne County to be on the National Register.

These days the Octagon House is a small tourist attraction with a few visitors. That wasn’t always the case. Bury said the record for visitors in a day was set in the late-1970s when nearly 900 adults visited along with close to that many children.

That was the result, at least in part, of some publicity in a Cleveland newspaper. People who had never even heard of Wayne County suddenly were showing up. That was a happy accident, the result of a reporter stopping by one day and then writing about the place.

“He was here on a Wednesday,” Bury said. “He explained who he was, and we talked for a couple of minutes, then 2 1/2 hours later he left. He said he’d get something in that Friday’s paper. Friday came, and there was nothing there. Saturday I went to the bank and grabbed the paper, and we had about 95% of the second page.

“We opened at 1 o’clock, and I finally got back here at 11:30 and said, ‘I think we’re going to be busy.’ My wife said, ‘You think? They’re already lining up.’”

In those days the Octagon House used to advertise some in the papers around Northeast Ohio all the way down to Columbus, and it would generate some traffic. These days the Burys rely on their website and heavily on social media.

With 50 years in the books and the Burys not getting any younger, smaller crowds — or even no crowds at some points — are certainly welcome.

“We’ve been here 50 years,” Bury said. “That’s a pretty long time.”

The Zimmerman Bury Octagon House is open by appointment only and during special events. Visit ZimmermanBuryOctagonHouse.org for more information.