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gambrel roof cape

This photo of a gambrel style Cape is the Joseph Atwood House in Chatham taken in 1935. Like most traditional Cape Cod style houses, this one has a single masonry chimney located in the center of the house. Notice the odd sized windows on the gable end, this is another characteristic of old original style Cape houses.

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Comments: gambrel roof cape

1. I’ve been doing research on the 4 18th century gambrel roof houses here in Tinmouth. They are unusual in Vermont at that period, though there are plenty from the Colonial Revival a century later. One of ours looks exactly like the Atwood house, in particular, the small windows on the gable ends to light up the space behind the purlins. I have two questions: where is the stairway to the second floor, and was the plan for this type of gambrel roof cape contained in a popular carpenter’s plan book of the period?
   Grant Reynolds
   Tinmouth Historical and Genealogical Society

   Posted by Grant Reynolds from Tinmouth, Vermont on 09/14 at 09:39 PM

2. One thing you can notice in this old picture is the lack of trees. It looks like there isn’t a decent sized tree in sight.

   Posted by Jim from Cape Cod on 09/23 at 09:05 PM

3. The stairs would be right inside the front door and would be a dog-leg stair or in rare occasion a good morning staircase as in the cape design. the gambrel footprint is basically the same as the cape the roof was changed to allow for more room upstairs. I have yet to see a carpenters plan book of that period with this type of roof system.

   Posted by Randall DiStefano from Grafton, Vermont on 01/26 at 03:30 PM

4. The John McKinstry house in Ellington, CT is a good example of this type of house.  Built in 1730 it is largely original in its layout, same roof lines, similar layout of windows.  These homes are surprisingly roomy.  I owned the house in the ‘90’s

   Posted by Jim Lyman from VA on 03/10 at 11:48 AM

5. I am currently working on this house in Chathem. It needs framing repairs upstairs and we are, since it is now home to the Chathem Historical Society, very carefully replacing some rafters and reinforcing the common purlins in a way that respects the original materials.

   I study historic carpentry and this is a facinating house. It has many reused boards and beams from other buildings. Some of the partition boards in the second floor are reused roof boards from a board-and-batten roof. This type of roofing was not uncommon, but surviving examples of these boards are extremely rare.

   An interesting feature of the timbers used to build this house are that they were hewn and then cut in half or quarters with a pit-saw so the rafters and purlins have both hewn sides and sawn sides.

   I have been studying gambrel roofs and I have found about 16 methods used to define the shape of a gambrel roof, mostly of French origin, but none of the methods I have found match this profile.

   The word gambrel is believed to be of American origin. Earlier they were called curb, broken, knee, or mansard roofs. In the American South an early name for these roofs was a “Dutch roof” and Mr. Atwood refered to this house as his Dutch mansion.

   It is very interesting to me to learn there are similar houses in other places. I will try to follow up on the others to learn more about them.

   Jim

   Posted by Jim Derby from Waldoboro, Maine on 06/17 at 10:07 PM

6. not to dismiss any claim to original style(s), but these homes look like poor attempts at restoring original bow roofs.  i can understand how builders would later copy this easier form.  just saying.

   Posted by karen from new bedford on 04/19 at 02:35 PM