In 1925, 67-year-old Henry James Stuart climbed down the steep bluffs of the eastern shore of Mobile Bay and began gathering bricks from the beach. They were the remains of brick-making factories that had operated along those shores over 100 years before. He bundled the bricks, along with white beach sand, into sacks and piled them onto his back. He then climbed, barefoot, back up the slopes of the bluff and carried the cargo a half mile through the woods. With these materials, he began to build a house in Montrose, Alabama, we now know as the round house of Tolstoy Park.
As its name suggests, the single-story house is round. It is only about 14 feet in diameter and height and has a domed roof. The property it stands on was once 10 acres of mostly pine forest, neighbored by a few other distant houses on even larger acreages of property. Stuart named his land Tolstoy Park in honor of the writer, Leo Tolstoy, who he felt a kinship toward. Other than a layer made from the old bricks picked up from the beach, the house is built of cement blocks. Each one was individually poured by Stuart himself and etched with the date of its creation. The inside and outside of the house were covered in plaster made from the sand Stuart collected on the beach and from a nearby creek. Outside of his home, Stuart built rows of cement garden beds, where he grew most of his food, and a few cement sun dials.
In 1926, the house was completed, and Stuart’s visitors nicknamed him the sage of Montrose, the hermit, and the modern Thoreau. He became a notable character locally in his own time and remains notable today. Part of his fame is due to his round house, which still stands today. The other part is due to his character. Stuart let his white hair and beard grow long, wore baggy old clothes, and didn’t wear shoes. For money he weaved rags and rugs on a loom and sold them to tourists and visitors. He was a vegetarian and an anarchist, once sending a letter and woven rug to the famed anarchist Emma Goldman while she was in prison…