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Architectural Angle Spring 2006
Joseph W. Dick answers the question, What is Cape Cod style?
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK WISEMAN
Cape Cod style is epitomized by the “Shingle Style,” which was first developed in residential and resort architecture from 1872 to 1899 and revived more recently starting in the early 1980s. This style anticipates the development of the modern house in its emphasis on open, asymmetrical floor plans and honest expression of structure. It was developed almost in reaction to the somber quality of Victorian architecture and the stuffy formality of Classical Revival architecture.
The Shingle Style’s open floor plan, in which spaces flow easily, one into another, was well suited to the informality desired in a resort house of the late 1800s and is very much suited to the houses of our era. The Shingle Style captures the essence of its architectural forebears while adding a relaxed approach, with an open, spreading floor plan, speaking to the ease of living that is so charming here. The open floor plan spills the rooms out onto the home’s porches, embracing the views of the marsh and outlying dune. The gray of the weathered shingle predominates, yet its counterpoint is the gleaming white of the porch colonnade, the quirky elliptical porthole window wrapped in deeply carved casings and keystones – classical elements juxtaposed against the rustic gray shingle. Covering all is the broad, enveloping tent of a shingled roof.
Relaxed, expansive, so comfortably fit with our soft landscape, the Shingle Style is at home in villages such as Falmouth Heights or in summer colonies as at West Chop. Whether strung as pearls along the bluff at Chatham or sitting alone as in the modernist houses dotting the dunes from Wellfleet to Provincetown, the Shingle Style is most at home here, although it is found all along the New England seaboard. My own memories are wrapped up in the night fog moving among the columns along the porch or in that rare Cape light bouncing up from the sea, setting the dune and its cottages aglow. I think of the great gray-shingled ladies arrayed on the slope of Hyannisport or strung along the bluff of Edgartown’s outer harbor, and I am at home.
My clients come to me for a house that has a traditional look and feel. They respond to the traditional forms as ones that evoke a sense of place, that speak of home. They are looking for a more informal house, usually – one with a layout that accommodates a more relaxed lifestyle than one they may be used to in the city. They are also looking for a layout that accommodates the needs of the present, one not suffocated by blind adherence to the antique. Composed with traditional elements, the Shingle Style embraces the modern floor-plan elements. It easily accommodates the more informal lifestyle sought by many of my clients.
Joseph W. Dick is an architect with offices in Yarmouthport and Vineyard Haven. He specializes in designing historically inspired houses.
Relaxed, expansive, so comfortably fit with our soft landscape, the Shingle Style is at home in villages such as Falmouth Heights or in summer colonies as at West Chop. Whether strung as pearls along the bluff at Chatham or sitting alone as in the modernist houses dotting the dunes from Wellfleet to Provincetown, the Shingle Style is most at home here, although it is found all along the New England seaboard. My own memories are wrapped up in the night fog moving among the columns along the porch or in that rare Cape light bouncing up from the sea, setting the dune and its cottages aglow. I think of the great gray-shingled ladies arrayed on the slope of Hyannisport or strung along the bluff of Edgartown’s outer harbor, and I am at home.
