Tolstoy Park, also known as the Henry Stuart House, is a round domed-shaped house located in Montrose, Alabama. The house can be found in an office complex car park (parking lot) which has been built around the house in recent years.
The History Of Tolstoy Park
Henry Stuart was an Englishman who had emigrated to the United States as a child. While living in Nampa, Idaho, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, given just a year to live, and advised to move somewhere warmer to live out his days.
So in 1923, at the age of 65, Henry Stuart purchased 10 acres of land just outside the city of Fairhope, Alabama, and moved from the north of the country to the warmer climate in the south. He named the 10 acres of land ‘Tolstoy Park’, and that is where his adventure began…
In 1925, two years after purchasing the land and living a year longer than he was expected to live, Stuart began building his own circular domed house, pouring each concrete block himself.
Construction of the building took less than a year, although it was delayed due to the Great Miami Hurricane in 1926 which came through the area.
When the one-room house was completed, it was just 14 feet in diameter and sunk 2 feet below ground level. It features six widows, two skylights, and one door to get in and out of the property.
After completion, Henry sought to live a simple life living on the property, growing his own food and weaving rugs. Because Mr. Stuart rarely left Tolstoy Park, he got the nickname the ‘Hermit of Montrose.’
However, his strange house and hermit lifestyle began to attract interest, so he received many visitors wanting to come and see his home. Over the years, Henry kept a log of all his visitors, which grew to 1,200 names.
Henry lived in the property until 1944 when he then moved to Oregon to live with his son. He died two years later, in 1946, at the age of 88, outliving his doctor’s expectation by more than two decades.
The Sonny Brewer Book
During the 1980’s writer, Sonny Brewer stumbled upon Tolstoy Park and was fascinated by the house sat in the middle of a car park.
After finding some newspaper articles about Tolstoy Park and the original owner, Mr. Stuart, Brewer began writing a book. In 2005, many years after his obsession with Tolstoy Park began, his novel ‘The Poet of Tolstoy Park’ was published.
Tolstoy Park Today
Today, the land Henry Stuart once owned has long been sold off, and the immediate area surrounding the Tolstoy Park house has become an office complex. Further from the house, you have everything from highways to residential homes which have been built on the land he once owned.
As you probably guessed, nobody lives in the house anymore, and in 2006 the property was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The story of Henry Stuart and Tolstoy Park is very similar to that of Boyce Luther Gulley. Boyce was also diagnosed with tuberculosis and moved to warmer climates, where he built his own home known as Mystery Castle.
