The Cape Cod house, once confined to southeastern Massachusetts, has spread to every corner of the United States. You can find a three-bedroom, four-bath Cape Cod style house listed for sale in Sherman Oaks, Calif. A two-bedroom, one-bath Cape is on the market in Milwaukee, Wisc. And if you’re looking to buy in the inviting Gulf Coast community of Parrish, Fla., a Cape Cod-style house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms can be yours.
A modern Cape in Portland, Ore.
Yes, the Cape Cod house has come a long way since the Pilgrims invented it out of necessity. They had to adapt the English half-timbered cottage to the New England climate. As the English colonists expanded southward from Plymouth, they built their houses along the King’s Highway (now roughly Routes 3A to 6A) to Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod.
The Standish House in Duxbury, Mass., built by Alexander Standish, son of Myles, in 1666
They started out as small wooden houses—now called “half houses”—easily expandable for growing families. The half Cape had two windows on one side of the door. A three-quarters Cape had another window on the other side of the door. A full Cape had two windows on each side of the door.
The Ephraim Snow House in Truro, Mass.
What Is a Cape Cod House?
The classic Cape Cod house sits low to the ground, with a steep roof, center chimney and small-paned windows. Shutters often, but not always, bracket the windows. The house typically has shingles covering the exterior and little ornamentation.
Since colonial times, the Cape Cod house has evolved into an all-purpose dwelling. Real estate agents sometimes describe any little house as a Cape—even if it’s asymmetrical, brick and ornamented. But just as colonial homeowners added and added onto their original small house, modern architects design Capes that measure 100 feet long with ells, porches and an attached garage.
The Cape Cod house has inspired dozens of books. Here are just six fun facts about America’s most popular dwelling.
1. A half house measured at least 16 feet wide.
The colonists took that measurement from England, where houses often doubled as oxen stables. Two oxen needed at least 16 feet.
2. They didn’t really call them “half houses.”
Today Cape Codders will call those tiny houses with one door and two windows a “half-house.” But back in the day, people called a half-house a “house.” If it had three windows in the front, people called it a “house and a half.” And if it had four windows, well then, people called it a “double house.”
The half house consisted of one room with a large brick chimney and fireplace. A small entrance hall led to the attic stairs. As a family grew, they added another room on the other side of the chimney.
The house turned into a saltbox when a family added a lean-to by continuing the slope of the roof in the back and closing in the space. They called it a saltbox because it resembled the wooden box in which they kept salt.
The Hoxie House in Sandwich, Mass., believed to be the oldest house on the Cape
3. The president of Yale coined the term “Cape Cod house” in 1800.
Timothy Dwight took a systematic series of vacations during his college’s summer break. He then wrote his observations, published posthumously, in the form of a letter to an imaginary English gentleman.
Dwight visited Cape Cod in 1800 and noticed the similarity of the houses while traveling through Yarmouth.
“The houses in Yarmouth are inferior to those in Barnstable,” he opined, “and much more generally of the class which may be called with propriety Cape Cod houses.”
“These have one story and four rooms on the lower floor, and are covered on the sides, as well as the roofs, with pine shingles, 18 inches in length. The chimney is in the middle immediately behind the front door, and on each side of the door are two windows. The roof is straight. Under it are two chambers, and there are two larger and two smaller windows in the gable end.”
The Taylor-Bray Farm in Yarmouth, Mass.
4. You can pretty much date a Cape Cod house by looking at three things.
Those are the chimney, the foundation and the front windows, according to Duncan Oliver, writing for the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth. Oliver cautions that Cape Cod house features vary according to their community.
“Dating must be done locally, as styles and trends lagged in some places by as much as 20 years,” he wrote. “However, once one house in the community is dated, others can be dated from it.”
Before 1750, Cape Cod houses had massive chimneys. They sat on the ground and their windows bumped up against the roof. The windows had nine panes over six, and only the six-pane window moved.
Around 1800, their chimneys got smaller, they sat a foot off the ground and the front windows started dropping down from the roof. The nine-over-six window gave way to six-over-six. Cut granite replaced stone as the foundation material of choice.
The reason for the smaller chimney? Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford. A Loyalist born in Woburn, Mass., he was a British military officer who, like his friend Benjamin Franklin, liked to experiment with heat and light. He designed a smaller, more efficient fireplace that became popular–and didn’t need huge chimneys.
Around 1830, Cape Cod houses began using brick for their foundations. Windows had dropped from the roof by a foot every 10 years. The houses also got taller, so by 1830 windows measured 4 feet down from the roof. Panes got bigger, either two over two or one over one.
Then as Puritanism faded, people began to decorate Cape houses. They’d add a set of fluted Federal pilasters, for example, or a Greek Revival pediment.
A Greek Revival Cape half house in Newton, Mass.
5. They’re energy efficient.
The early settlers took full advantage of those giant fireplaces by building low ceilings to conserve heat. They also generally built houses so they faced south for maximum sun.
ZeroEnergy Design, a Boston architectural firm, channels the energy saving design principles that shaped the early Cape Cod house.
The Simeon Donae House in Eastham, Mass.
ZeroEnergy architect Stephanie Horowitz explained how energy efficiency results from the overlapping pine shingles, low roofline and short overhangs. The shingles insulated and waterproofed the house, while the low profile gave it less exposure to the cold and the wind.
“The short or absent overhangs allow us to wrap a house with continuous insulation. In other styles, longer overhangs can create a thermal bridge at a notoriously weak point where the roof meets the wall,” she told NewEngland.com in 2015. “Not so with a Cape.”
6. They experienced a revival in the 20th century because of one man.
Architect Royal Barry Wills gets credit for resuscitating the Cape Cod house beginning in the 1920s. Born in Melrose, Mass., in 1895, he graduated from MIT with a degree in architectural engineering. He got a job as a design engineer for Turner Construction, working on commercial buildings.
Royal Barry Wills
But he loved residential architecture, and he designed houses on the side. He also submitted architectural drawings to the Boston Transcript and answered readers’ questions about architecture. The publicity got him commissions. He then obtained his architect license and opened an office on Beacon Hill. Wills designed houses until Jan. 10, 1962, the day he died.
He designed many of his firm’s 2,500 houses in the Cape Cod style. But he added dormers, garages, bathrooms, closets, heating vents and refrigerator nooks. And he anticipated Levittown by designing a 300-house development for defense workers in Springfield during World War II.
His influence went beyond the houses he designed. Wills wrote eight books, including “Houses for good living” in 1946. He lectured extensively and received many awards.
In 1938, Life magazine sponsored a contest in which Wills and Frank Lloyd Wright each designed a house for a middle-class family. Wright entered one of his Usonian designs, Wills a Cape Cod house. Wills beat out Wright. The family selected his design and built their house in Edina, Minn.
Fashionable architecture firms had little use for Wills’ traditional houses, but he didn’t care. He understood the appeal of the Cape Cod house. They’re “as unpretentious as they are livable,” he said. “Carping critics may poke fun at their rambler roses, picket fences and stately elms, but such things spell home to us.”
End Notes
Walk in the Footsteps of Heroes.
Your Guide to the Living History of New England’s Revolution is Here.
Go beyond the history books and stand where America’s fight for independence began. This isn’t just a guide—it’s your time machine. The newly updated third edition of Revolutionary War Sites in New England is packed with everything you need to plan an unforgettable journey through the past.
Fully Updated & Expanded: This third edition includes new itineraries, a hundred new landmarks and even more stories to enrich your adventure.
Click here to order a paperback or ebook.
Featured image: Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Typical house, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Cape Cod Massachusetts United States, None. [Between 1980 and 2006] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2011632109/.
Ephraim Snow House Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, Ephraim Snow, Nathaniel Dyer, Huldah Dyer, Ephraim Dyer, John Dyer, Ruth Dyer, et al., Robinson, Cervin, photographer. Ephraim Snow House, North Pamet Road, Truro, Barnstable County, MA. Barnstable County Truro Massachusetts, 1933. Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/ma0073/.
Simeon Doane House Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, and Donald B Myer, Robinson, Cervin, photographer. Simeon Doane House, Nauset Road, Eastham, Barnstable County, MA. Eastham Massachusetts Barnstable County, 1933. Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/ma0013/.
Howes Jorgenson House Historic American Buildings Survey, C., Howes, D., Howes, D. & Connally, E. A., Robinson, C., photographer. (1933) Howes-Jorgenson House, State Route 6A, Dennis, Barnstable County, MA. Dennis Barnstable County Massachusetts, 1933. Documentation Compiled After. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ma0008/.
Modern Cape in Oregon: By Ian Poellet – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59323718.
Greek Revival Cape By Thomas Kelley from Boston, MA – H. P. Page House, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3976306.
Taylor-Bray Farm By David A Finkelstein – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28340964.
as a boy in Boston. Later, his summer home called Beauport on Eastern Point in Gloucester, known today as the Sleeper-McCann House, became a showcase of his expertise as an interior decorator.
