And if you can’t decide between the two, a three-quarter Cape is for you, with two windows on one side of the door and one window on the other. #Cape cod house style full#A full Cape, on the other hand, has a door in the center with two windows flanking it on each side. A half Cape has its front door on one side of the facade, with two windows on the other side (this is also known as a “single Cape”). Bettmann // Getty Images What Are the Characteristics of a Cape Cod-Style House?Ĭape Cod-style houses can come in many shapes and sizes-the charming, modest dimensions of a half Cape make ideal starter homes for many people, while others may aspire to the grander proportions of a full Cape. Nowadays, original Capes like those have sometimes been added onto so often that they have a kind of “Russian doll” look, Seifter says.Ī row of Cape Cod–style houses in the planned community of Levittown, New York, in 1954. Some 70 years later, Cape Cods reached what was perhaps their peak moment during the 1940s postwar boom, when the first phase of the archetypal planned suburban community of Levittown, New York, was made up entirely of Cape Cod–style homes. It was a very workaday type of architecture…the aesthetic aspect did not become ‘a thing’ until later in the 19th century, when a revival in historic American forms took off,” coinciding with the American centennial celebration in 1876. “Each generation tried to be true to the original form, but these were more modern houses and they had to accommodate functions that were not in the original versions. “There can be a very thick layer of aesthetics laid over the function,” Seifter says. It doesn’t get any more classic than this-a white-picket-fenced Cape Cod–style house in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Early iterations were often just one- or two-room cottages with a fireplace in the middle-the room with the fireplace always doubled as the bedroom-but the style has continued to evolve in accordance with the times. The term “Cape Cod style” was first used many decades later, when the president of Yale University, the Reverend Timothy Dwight IV, published Travels in New England and New York (1821–22) after taking a trip to the Cape. (Seifter notes that white cedar has somewhat fallen out of favor of late, with other choices like red cedar being seen as a more eco-friendly option.) Where Does the Name “Cape Cod House” Come From?īut these houses built by the early American settlers were not named after their locale, at least not initially. Traditionally, Cape Cods were clad with shingles of white cedar, which stood up well to the salt air and took on a silvery patina over time. “In England these houses were made from brick or masonry, but the settlers in America didn’t have those materials so they used wood siding,” he says, which wound up having the added benefit of durability against the harsh maritime weather. A quintessential Cape Cod home, shingled in durable white cedar, in Chatham, Massachusetts.
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