 |
|
The Cape Cod house has narrow or no overhangs; multi-paned windows; and a steep gabled roof.
|
By Chuck Ross
The suburban Cape Cod-style houses many Americans now call home bear little in common with their original 17th Century counterparts. After all, bathrooms, garages and, in most cases, even kitchens, were unheard of when New England settlers first erected the simple 1-1/2 story structures. However, their basic, expandable design — drawn from thatched cottages common to the English countryside — offered the same advantages to the colonists that drew baby boomers' parents to the design in droves in the 1940s through early 1960s.
"The Capes were the original starter home," says Jane Gitlin, author of Capes: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling and Building New (Taunton Press, 2003) and project architect for Westport, Conn.-based Huelster Design Studio, LLC. "They could be constructed as a quarter-cape, a half-cape or a full-cape, and they lent themselves to expansion over time."
At Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass., you can see replicas of the earliest houses we've come to call Capes. According to Treena Crochet, author of Colonial Style: Creating Classic Interiors in Your Cape, Colonial or Saltbox House (Taunton Press, 2005), the originals comprised little more than a single room with a loft space tucked in the eaves. Within a few decades, as New England took hold, these structures grew to their current story-and-a-half dimensions.
"The half story is generally two bedrooms under the eaves of the roof," she says.
Today's Capes
Though modern-day versions show up with many façade variations, original Cape Cod-style houses follow an unvarying pattern, with the front door in the center and two multi-paned windows on either side. Half Capes are, well, half the size, with the door to one side of the two first-story windows. In a three-quarter Cape, the fronts feature three windows, two to one side of the door and one to the other. The gabled roof features little overhang and reaches up to a steep peak.
Opening the front door, colonial-day visitors were greeted by a central staircase, with two rooms on either side of a small entryway. As the homes got larger, a third room spanned the structure's full width, behind the two front rooms, creating a multi-purpose cooking/dining/gathering space – an 18th-century great room, if you will. A large centered chimney enabled a large cooking fireplace, often complete with a built-in bread oven, and also served fireplaces in each of the other main rooms in an early version of central heating.
Crochet and Gitlin identify three characteristics that help identify the classic full Cape:
- A first floor placed close to grade, with no overhangs at the roof and eaves.
- A simple gable-design roof with a steep 10/12 or 12/12 pitch, creating room enough for second-story living space under the roof line. In many cases, window or shed dormers have been added over the years to make second-floor living even more comfortable.
- Symmetrical arrangements of individual, multi-paned, double-hung windows (early glass makers could produce only small panes, so an original Cape's sashes can feature up to 12 panes each.
Chuck Ross is a freelance writer who frequently covers building and construction topics.
| 
)
