Architecture and Place Identity

Stairs led up to the loft under the eaves, which could be used as storage space or serve as bedrooms as the children got older. As the family grew, the house might be expanded, building on to one side to make it a “three-quarter Cape.” Eventually the house might be expanded again to a “full Cape” or “double house” with two windows on either side of the now centered front door. Some full Capes were built as such from the start, rather than being the result of expansion, or sometimes two half houses were joined to create a full Cape. The Cape house owes its success to its low profile, which enabled it to ride out the fierce winds of nor’easters and blizzards, and the simplicity and adaptability of its plan.

The earliest houses were thatched. However, Cape settlers soon found that thatch was unsuitable for the New England climate and turned instead to cedar shingles, which lasted much longer and weathered nicely. The front was often covered in clapboard, but covering an entire house in clapboard was considered wasteful and ostentatious.

Cape Cod houses continued to be built on Cape Cod until about 1830 when the newer Greek Revival style became popular. For this style the same basic pattern was used, with the door being placed in the gable end. Greek Revival was followed later in the century by Victorian and then Gothic revival. Many of these styles can be seen on the Cape. In the early 20th century, the humble Cape enjoyed a renaissance as part of a general revival of interest in American colonial styles. Modern versions of the Cape, “the domestic equivalent of the Model T Ford,”[1] were built not just on Cape Cod itself, but throughout much of the country.

House styles, like other aspects of culture, constantly undergo change. From the beginning, Cape Cod residents adapted their homes to changing needs. While the Cape Cod house form has changed, it continues to influence housing styles on Cape Cod today. Contemporary houses on the Cape may combine elements from several historic styles, but they often have common architectural and landscape features including clapboard, shingles, shutters, white trim, and picket fences, and lantern posts. These elements form a "landscape ensemble," a complex of features that when taken together in a neighborhood or region a particular "look" and contribute to a sense of place. In this case they say “Cape Cod.”

1. William Morgan, The Cape Cod Cottage (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 19.

2. Melissa Malouf Belz, “Spirit of Place and the Evolution of the Vernacular House in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh, India” (PhD diss., Kansas State University, 2012), 41, Pro-Quest (AAT 355 1019), 41.

Architecture and Place Identity: Cape Houses

"The Cape Cod cottage is the nearly perfect house. A combination of necessity and tradition, the Cape Cod has been a fundamental, iconic, and enduring expression of the American home for almost four hundred years." [1]

Another way that place identity is expressed is through architecture, especially vernacular, or folk, architecture. Belz reminds us that, “A house is functional space, but it is also an artifact, a marker of identity, and a sanctuary.”[2] As a “marker of identity,” the architectural form most expressive of a Cape Cod identity is the house that owes its name to the region—the Cape Cod house. This iconic house form was derived from the houses early settlers knew in England, and then adapted to the environment of the New World.

The Cape house is a low, one-and-a-half-story boxy house with a pitched roof and a large chimney that emerges at the roof’s ridgeline, usually directly in line with the front door. It is found in three basic sizes, and could be easily modified as the family’s needs changed. A “half house” or “half Cape” had two windows on the south-facing front, either to the left or the right of the door. The interior space consisted of two main rooms both heated by the massive fireplace—the front room or parlor, and the "keeping room" which served as kitchen, workshop, and living space. This back room included a small bedroom (often used as the “borning room”), and the buttery, named for the "butts" or large containers of wine stored there. The kitchen had a trap door and steep steps to a circular cellar where vegetables were stored in winter and perishables kept cool in summer. The parlor, across the front of the house, was a formal room used for weddings or funerals, or when the minister came to call. The fireplace in the parlor might be paneled, and a portrait or clock, if the family was prosperous enough to own either one, displayed on the mantel.

The original part of this house in Brewster, a "half Cape," consisted of the section with the chimney and two windows to the right of the door. The two sections on the left are later additions.

A "three quarter Cape" (left) had two windows on one side of the door and one window on the other, while a "full Cape" (below) had four front-facing windows.

These houses in Harwichport show variations on the traditional design while maintaining a consistent Cape Cod "look."

The original part of this half Cape shows the slightly bowed roof of many early Cape homes.