Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 22.

[p. 6] fifteen panes in the lower story, which is eleven feet high, and their splayed openings have recessed pockets into which the panelled shutters fold back. The ceilings of these four large rooms are heavily corniced, and all the door and window openings have a moulded trim enriched with carved center and corner blocks.

In the lower story such doors as were in curved partitions were made to conform to the curve. The entrance hall took a segment of four feet off each circle, making a straight side of fifteen feet in each room in which were wide doors of two leaves on the lower floor. The entrance hall had a heavy panelled door, with transom and side-lights, and a window at the rear. The latter is shown in the enlarged photograph which is preserved in the library. This was secured by the forethought of former President Eddy of the Historical Society, prior to the alterations made at the erection of the brick stack-room, and shows the fine old stairway as originally built.

As yet we have found no one to tell us of the mode of construction of those circular walls. The alterations made twenty years ago (by workmen from out of town) may or may not have revealed it to them. The windows set deeply into the walls from without and more so within, and suggest that the circular walls may be of rough brick-work. If not, they may be of planks, sawed in segments and spiked or ‘trunnelled,’ one upon another, as was the circular house of Enoch Robinson on Prospect hill in Somerville.¹ On the exterior they are sheathed vertically with narrow boards whose edges are devoid of heading or rounded corners, and their joining is now, after the lapse of so many years of exposure, barely noticeable. There is apparent sincerity of construction, in that no attempt is made to imitate a lintel over the windows, only a narrow plinth of wood at the flagging, and no cornice or moulding at the top.