The Feusier Octagon House, one of the oldest houses on Russian Hill, is visible in early photographs of the hill, near the summit, not closely surrounded by other buildings. It is one of only two surviving octagonal houses in the San Francisco Bay Area. The other is the Colonial Dames Octagon on Gough Street. (The extant Marine Exchange Point Lobos Lookout Station was built in 1927 with an octagonal footprint.)

Octagon houses were a national fad from 1850 until 1870 as the result of a book by Orson Squire Fowler, A Home for All; or, the Gravel Hall and the Octagon Mode of Building. Fowler, a New York phrenologist who identified one's well-being with the shape and construction of his domicile, proposed a new and cheap way to construct houses for the new age. The octagon form was prescribed so that every room could receive sunlight at some time of the day.

A hundred or more octagons houses survive in the United States. At one time there were at least five in San Francisco, as well as others in the Fruitvale section of Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area.

Of the San Francisco Octagons, all but one were on or near Russian Hill, the sole exception being Cyrus Palmer's home on Rincon Hill. It is likely that all of these were built by a single builder from the eastern United States.

Louis Feusier first appears as the owner and occupant in 1875. Feusier is said to have been a companion of such San Francisco notables as Leland Stanford and Mark Twain. His business interests included wholesale produce, mining, salmon canning, winemaking and the importation of oriental goods.

The Feusiers added a third story with Mansard roof surmounted by an octagonal cupola. Like other buildings on Russian Hill, the house escaped the 1906 Earthquake but was menaced by the Fire. The outbuildings were dynamited but the main house was saved.

Feusier's wife Louise lived here until her death, as did their son Clarence who died in 1951. In 1954 the Feusier Octagon was sold by the family.

Source: Adapted from City Planning Commission Resolution 6633 dated October 1, 1970.

The Feusier Octagon House is also NRHP listing 74000554, and it contributes to the Russian Hill Paris Block Historic District.