That’s not uncommon, but having grown up in a house heated by wood fires I knew that when building our current house. The main fireplace is on a central wall and has enormous thermal mass. Beauty and utility can be combined.
My grandparents' house was this way - the chimney was in the center of the house (built sometime in the late 1800s and rebuilt in the 1950s).
The fireplace had a stone chimney - and the kitchen was built in an 'L' shape around the first floor of the fireplace. The (master) bedroom (an additional bedroom was built in the 1950s), the stone of the chimney was a good quarter of one of the walls.
I do, however, think that the rough hewn stone and mortar of the chimney with the insets around it had a certain rustic beauty... aside from the "that got warm" in the winter and could keep the kitchen, living room, and bedroom warm.
