The Octagon House, 90 Hill Street, was built about 1850 by George Washington Pierson as the result of the teaching by the famous phrenologist, Orson Fowler, that an eight-sided house got more benefit from sunlight than a four-sided house. Fowler lectured in Biddeford in 1848 and several octagonal houses were built as a result of which only this one remains in Biddeford.

Orson Squire Fowler was the foremost proponent of phrenology in the United States when that pseudo-science was all the rage; he was the creator of the architectural design of octagon houses, a form which spread across the nation.