A circular house overlooking Highway 101 in Novato, Calif. is on the market for the first time ever. The house, which has fascinated generations of commuters, was built in 1963 by Sam Harkleroad, a tinkerer who dotted Marin County with unconventional dwellings before he died in 1993. "He was tired of the same old houses," says his grandson Harold Pozzi, 71. "He thought normal houses were boring."

The round house is one of seven residences on a 2.25-acre site next to the freeway. Its closest neighbor is the "potato chip house," built in 1959. That house's swoopy roof, which approaches the ground at two points, can be described mathematically -- as a hyperbolic paraboloid -- or by reference to the snack food. The other five houses are more conventional.

The land and buildings -- all seven of which are tenant-occupied -- are listed at $3.3 million.

The round house was designed by Harkleroad to turn 320 degrees, or 8/9 of a circle. "He liked a challenge," Pozzi says of his mother's father.

Pozzi has been caring for the compound for 60 years. He regularly drives from his home in Petaluma, about 10 miles north of Novato, to mow the lawn and maintain the buildings. Last year he painted the outside of the round house. Now, he says, "I'm getting too old," which is why he decided to list the property on behalf of himself and his niece and nephew. (Pozzi, a retired truck driver, has no children and his only sibling, a brother, died in 2020.)

The sale is being handled by Angelo Baglieri, the senior director of investments at Marcus & Millichap in San Francisco. Baglieri, whose firm specializes in investment real estate, got the listing by cold-calling Pozzi a decade ago, then waiting patiently until Pozzi was ready to sell.

The central core of the round house contains conduits for gas, water and sewage, each of which is able to swivel enough to accommodate the 320-degree turn. (A house that went all the way around would have posed far more complex engineering problems.)

The rotation is powered by two washing machine-type motors, and Pozzi says the system functions well. "It's got to be checked once in a while, " he says. "Everything seems to be fine right now." Still, the house wasn't designed to be in constant motion, like a revolving restaurant, for which it has sometimes been mistaken. "You don't turn it," Pozzi says, "unless you have a reason to."

Pozzi was 11 when the house moved more than 320 degrees. A couple of years after Harkleroad completed it, the state acquired its site, which was in the path of the new Highway 101. Harkleroad bought the house back from the state. Then, using a bulldozer borrowed from a friend, he pushed and pulled it to its present location.

The house is cantilevered off a cylindrical core, which leaves plenty of room below for shaded parking. It has a wraparound terrace and lots of picture windows. The three bedrooms and two bathrooms are spacious, if awkwardly shaped (a problem for almost any round building).

According to a 1986 profile in the Los Angeles Times, Harkleroad designed and built 25 houses in Marin County, always incorporating found materials or structures. He said he had built one house, using a flatbed truck as a base, for $122.

His workshop was in a small building next to the round house. On its roof was what he called "the poor man's energy wheel," a jerry-built wind turbine made of carved-up barrels. On windy days the shop was energy-independent.

Harkleroad grew up on a farm in Fresno. Back then, he told the L.A. Times,"If you wanted toys, you built them. You didn't have a million dollars to spend like the kids today." His formal education ended in high school.

He moved to the Bay Area as a young man. Over the years he panned for gold, picked fruit, and worked as a ship rigger, a tree surgeon and a trucker. He began buying land in Novato, about 20 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, in the 1940s.

Harkleroad said he built the 1,560-square-foot "round house," with a diameter of about 50 feet, for $17,000. One way he saved money, according to Pozzi, was getting companies to donate products. He received free appliances from Tappan. In exchange, Pozzi says, he agreed to let the public tour the finished house for several months.

Setting a sale price was tricky, Baglieri says. "There really are no direct comparables. So I looked at the property from several different angles, including the income it currently produces, other multifamily and residential sales in Novato, the value of approximately 2.25 acres of land, and the fact that it contains seven detached homes on one parcel. We also considered the property's unique history and its long-term potential." Baglieri can't predict who the right buyer would be. It could be a developer with no particular interest in saving the round house. "Or," he says, "it might be a tech billionaire who says, 'I just have to have that.'" But, as Pozzi responded during a joint interview, "Would a billionaire want to deal with seven rentals?"

Asked if it's important to him that the house survive, Pozzi demurred. "Everybody who travels on the 101 knows the round house," he says. "A lot of people wouldn't want to see it go."