The Shingle style is an American architectural style

Architectural style

Architectural styles classify architecture in terms of the use of form, techniques, materials, time period, region and other stylistic influences. It overlaps with, and emerges from the study of the evolution and history of architecture...

 made popular by the rise of the New England school of architecture, which eschewed the highly ornamented patterns of the Eastlake style in Queen Anne architecture.

In the Shingle style, English influence was combined with the renewed interest in Colonial American architecture which followed the 1876 celebration of the Centennial. Architects emulated colonial houses' plain, shingled surfaces as well as their massing, whether in the simple gable of McKim Mead and White's Low House

William D. Low House

An icon of American architecture, the William G. Low House was a seaside cottage at 3 Low Lane in Bristol, Rhode Island. Designed in 1886-87 by architect Charles Follen McKim of the New York City firm, McKim, Mead & White, the house — with its single, exaggerated, 140-foot-long gable — embodied the...

 or in the complex massing of Kragsyde

Kragsyde

Kragsyde is the name of a mansion built on Smith's Point at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, United States, in 1883 and demolished in 1929. The house was commissioned by Bostonian George Nixon Black, Jr. to the famous architectural firm of Peabody & Stearns .Kragsyde is generally regarded as...

, which looked almost as if a colonial house had been fancifully expanded over many years. This impression of the passage of time was enhanced by the use of shingles. Some architects, in order to attain a weathered look on a new building, even had the cedar

Cedar wood

Cedar wood comes from several different trees that grow in different parts of the world, and may have different uses.* California incense-cedar, from Calocedrus decurrens, is the primary type of wood used for making pencils...

 shakes dipped in buttermilk, dried and then installed, to leave a grayish tinge to the façade.

The Shingle style also conveyed a sense of the house as continuous volume. This effect—of the building as an envelope of space, rather than a great mass, was enhanced by the visual tautness of the flat shingled surfaces, the horizontal shape of many Shingle-style houses, and the emphasis on horizontal continuity, both in exterior details and in the flow of spaces within the houses.

History

McKim, Mead and White and Peabody and Stearns

Peabody and Stearns

Peabody & Stearns was a premier architectural firm in the Eastern United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, the firm consisted of Robert Swain Peabody and John Goddard Stearns, Jr...

 were two of the notable firms of the era that helped to popularize the Shingle style, through their large-scale commissions for "seaside cottages" of the rich and the well-to-do in such places as Newport, Rhode Island. Perhaps the most famous Shingle-style house built in American was "Kragsyde

Kragsyde

Kragsyde is the name of a mansion built on Smith's Point at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, United States, in 1883 and demolished in 1929. The house was commissioned by Bostonian George Nixon Black, Jr. to the famous architectural firm of Peabody & Stearns .Kragsyde is generally regarded as...

" (1882) the summer home commissioned by Bostonian G. Nixon Black, from Peabody and Stearns. Kragsyde was built atop the rocky coastal shore near Manchester-By-the-Sea, Massachusetts

Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts

Manchester-by-the-Sea is a town on Cape Ann, in Essex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the town population was 5,228.-History:...

, and embodied every possible tenet of the Shingle style. The William G. Low House, designed by McKim, Mead & White and built in 1887, is another notable example.

Many of the concepts of the Shingle style were adopted by Gustav Stickley

Gustav Stickley

Gustav Stickley was a manufacturer of furniture and the leading proselytizer for the American Arts and Crafts movement, an extension of the British Arts and Crafts movement.-Biography:...

, and adapted to the American version of the Arts and Crafts Movement

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

. Additionally, there are several other notable styles of Victorian architecture, including Italianate, Second Empire, Folk and Gothic revival.

Signicant concentrations of shingle-style architecture preserved in U.S. National Register of Historic Places-listed historic districts include:

• Bay Head Historic District in Bay Head, New Jersey
  Bay Head, New Jersey
  Bay Head is a Borough in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 968. Bay Head is situated on the Barnegat Peninsula, a long, narrow barrier peninsula that separates Barnegat Bay from the Atlantic Ocean...
  
  , with several dozen Shingle houses
• Houses in Sycamore Historic District
  Houses in Sycamore Historic District
  The houses in the Sycamore Historic District, in Sycamore, Illinois, United States, cross a variety of architectural styles and span from the 1830s to the early 20th century. There are 187 contributing properties within the historic district, 75% of the districts buildings. Many of the homes are...
  
  , in Sycamore, Illinois
• Fenwick Historic District, perhaps Connecticut's largest concentration, with 17
• Montauk Association Historic District
  Montauk Association Historic District
  The Montauk Association Historic District is a historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. It is a complex of large Shingle style cottages for wealthy New York City families' summer use, designed by McKim, Meade and White within a site plan designed by...
  
  , on Long Island

The style was named, together with the Stick Style, by Yale University architectural historian Vincent Scully

Vincent Scully

Vincent Joseph Scully, Jr. is Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art in Architecture at Yale University, and the author of several books on the subject...

 in his 1949 doctoral dissertation The Cottage Style. This was followed by several magazine articles on the subject, culminating in Scully's The Shingle Style with the Stick Style in 1971 and The Shingle Style Today in 1974.

Examples of the Shingle style

Further reading

• Scully, Vincent. The Shingle Style Today. New York: George Braziller, 1974. ISBN 0-8076-0760-6

External links

• About Shingle architecture, photo-essay at About.Com