The Saltbox House and Cape Cod Architecture in USA

Mon, Feb 25th 2008, 00:00

The beauty of New England and the Cape Cod area is the simplicity of the wooden clapboard houses that blend into the landscape.


The Cape Cod building style was established by the early colonists who settled in the Cape Cod area from the 17th Century. They built simple, sturdy timber frame houses clad in the distinctive wooden planks. Many of the early wooden houses still stand today.

The early Cape Cod houses were symmetrical buildings with two rooms, the hall and the parlour. These rooms had to serve multiple purposes, living areas by day and sleeping areas by night. The central chimney is distinctive in Cape Cod architecture, helping to keep the whole house warm during the cold winters.

As families got bigger the need for space grew. Dormers were cut into the roofs.

The saltbox house also makes for an inexpensive add on. The saltbox gets its name from the unique shape of the boxes that early settlers stored their salt in. The saltbox house is a timber frame house with two stories in the front of the house and one storey at the back. The roof is short and high in the front with a steep low slope at the back, called a cat slide. The steep back roof provided protection from the howling winter winds.

The Cape Cod building style and saltbox house enjoyed a revival in the 1940s and 1950s and these relatively inexpensive houses are seen in suburbs all over the world. The wooden dormer cladding epitomises the spirit of the beach cottage and the Cape Cod influence offers the ultimate in coastal living architecture.

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