Tolstoy Park
Henry Stuart built his Round House at Tolstoy Park in Montrose, AL by hand over a two-year period, completing it in 1926. This picture was taken in 1927.
Who is Henry Stuart?
1858 – 1946
Stuart advocated and lived a simple and purposeful life. He was a vegetarian, growing food in an irrigated “concrete garden.” He was a voracious reader with an extensive library; Tolstoy occupied a place of honor on his bookshelves.
He had a wide circle of people with whom he corresponded. He was interested in the theories of the economist Henry George on which the colony of Fairhope was founded. He attended and participated in the weekly Fairhope Forum speaker programs and regularly socialized with neighbors and friends. He was an accomplished weaver of beautiful rugs, a craft he learned in Idaho and taught at Marietta Johnson’s Organic School. The simple life he lived in Baldwin County restored his health and spirit.
He had many visitors (belying his “Hermit” label) and kept a visitor book which had many names listed from notable figures intrigued by Fairhope such as the prominent lawyer and civil rights activist, Clarence Darrow. We now have Stuart’s diaries, photographs taken by him, and many articles of interest shedding new light on his life.
Mr. Stuart lived in Montrose from 1923 until 1944, when he left Baldwin County to move to Oregon where his two sons lived. Mr. Stuart died in 1946.
The Importance of the Round House
The Round House was constructed between 1925 and 1926 by Henry Stuart. The small domed concrete building, located on Parker Road in Montrose, is the only surviving portion of the 10 acres Mr. Stuart bought and named Tolstoy Park. It is the sole physical reminder of the man known as a modern Thoreau, the Hermit of Montrose, and Ye Olde Weaver.
Stuart’s house is on both the National Register of Historic Places and the Baldwin County Register of Historic Places.
It is architecturally significant and unique nationwide. Set two feet into the ground, the house was comfortable year-round from the insulation of the earth and good ventilation from windows and skylights. The solid concrete block structure (blocks handmade by Stuart) has withstood hurricanes for a century. Mr. Stuart designed and built the house himself from local materials: sand, bricks, wood from his property and found objects on the beach. It is a unique structure with a story to tell.
Where is the Round House?
Why Move Tolstoy Park to the Flying Creek Nature Preserve?
Because it now will be able to:
Local author, Sonny Brewer, fictionalized Stuart’s life in the popular novel The Poet of Tolstoy Park which was published in 2005.
…a lifestyle that disappeared decades ago.
“Henry will be glad to move out of the paved parking lot and back to paradise. Visitors will get to experience Henry’s round house as evidence of a lifestyle that disappeared decades ago. But the spirit of one man’s will to live still exists as a genuine keepsake in every one of those 80-pound blocks he stacked in a circle to make his walls.” – Sonny Brewer
The Poet of Tolstoy Park book is available at Page & Palette in Fairhope or from Amazon.
henry stuart’s 1928 diary
The Fairhope Single Tax Corporation Archives
