The Cape Cod house is one of the most popular home styles in New England. It’s spread far and wide. But what makes a Cape a Cape?
First off, it’s one-and-a-half stories. That’s a defining feature, says Gary Sachau, an architectural historian retired from the National Park Service.
He’s walking along a stretch of busy Route 6A in Yarmouth Port, which boasts plenty of historic homes in the Cape Cod style.
“The main level was occupied, usable space, as was the second half-story, where you have the gable roof,” Sachau says.
The slope of the gable roof always faces front to back.
A typical antique Cape has a center chimney, to warm all the rooms from the middle.
In a full Cape, the main door sits front and center, with two windows placed symmetrically on either side. A smaller version, the boxy half Cape, can look like one side has been lopped off next to the door.
On a short stretch of road here in Yarmouth Port, there are full, half, and even three-quarter Capes — all historic, Sachau says.
“What happened, oftentimes, is that a house might start out as a half Cape for cost purposes, whatever, you know, to keep it small. And then eventually, as the family needed more space, they might have expanded to the right or left.”
A 2011 book by Cape Cod resident Arthur P. Richmond, called “The Evolution of the Cape Cod House: An Architectural History,” shows how the lines of a Cape echo medieval English cottages.
Modern-day Capes are still modeled after designs dating back to the late 1600s. Vincent House, a Cape in Edgartown now owned by the Vineyard Preservation Trust, predates the Declaration of Independence by more than a century.
Early Capes were built all over New England. Bethel, Maine, has one built around 1780.
But the name comes from right here in Yarmouth.
The simplicity of the homes may be what led the president of what was then Yale College, Timothy Dwight, to give them their name. Sachau says Dwight wasn’t impressed with these small homes when he visited Yarmouth in 1800.
He unfolds a piece of paper and reads a quotation from Dwight’s book, “Travels in New-England and New-York.”
“The houses in Yarmouth are inferior to those in Barnstable, and much more generally of the class, which may be called with propriety Cape Cod houses.”
“Well — that stuck,” Sachau says. The modest homes with the sloping roofs became known as Cape Cods.
In the 20th century, Boston architect Royal Barry Wills propelled an upscale revival of the Cape Cod style.
But the design was destined to become a middle-class staple.
After World War II, many a baby boomer grew up in a modified Cape, with dormers or a picture window. Capes even became part of the prototypical American suburb at Levittown, New York.
The style may be named for Cape Cod, but it's part of architectural history in New England and beyond.
So — the next time you see a house that seems to have just the right proportions, ask yourself: “Is it a Cape?”
