Picture Rollin N. Clapp's eight-sided home rising here in 1886, on the north end of Anastasia Island. Built in 1886 for Rollin N. Clapp of St. Louis, Missouri, this eight-sided house is the only classic surviving octagon house in St. Augustine and has been called "One of St. Augustine's most important residential buildings. As you look, imagine stories of later residents: Mary Antin, author of The Promised Land; Norman MacLeish, artist and brother of Pulitzer Prizewinning poet and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish; and Lea Wells, the first female architect in St. Augustine.
The house’s significance was recognized in 1989 when it was listed as the Octagon House in A Guide to Florida's Historic Architecture, prepared by the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects and published by the University of Florida Press. It also figured in preservation efforts: it would have been one of some 30 contributing properties in the Lighthouse Park Historic District proposed in 1993 to the St. Augustine city commission for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, but that proposal was turned down by the commission because of the vehement opposition of some residents. Picture Mary Antin, Norman MacLeish, and Lea Wells once walking through these very rooms.