![\"Vincent](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/cape-cod-houses-2-1000x667.jpeg\")
Vincent House in Edgartown was built in 1672. (Courtesy of Randi Baird\/Vineyard Preservation Trust)<\/p>\nThe Cape Cod house is one of the most popular home styles in New England. It\u2019s spread far and wide. But what makes a Cape a Cape?<\/p>\n
First off, it\u2019s one-and-a-half stories. That\u2019s a defining feature, says Gary Sachau, an architectural historian retired from the National Park Service.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s walking along a stretch of busy Route 6A in Yarmouth Port, which boasts plenty of historic homes in the Cape Cod style.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main level was occupied, usable space, as was the second half-story, where you have the gable roof,\u201d Sachau says.<\/p>\n
The slope of the gable roof always faces front to back.<\/p>\n
A typical antique Cape has a center chimney, to warm all the rooms from the middle.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
On a short stretch of road here in Yarmouth Port, there are full, half, and even three-quarter Capes \u2014 all historic, Sachau says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vincent House in Edgartown was built in 1672. (Courtesy of Randi Baird\/Vineyard Preservation Trust)<\/p>\n
A 2011 book by Cape Cod resident Arthur P. Richmond, called \u201cThe Evolution of the Cape Cod House: An Architectural History,\u201d shows how the lines of a Cape echo medieval English cottages.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Early Capes were built all over New England. Bethel, Maine, has one built around 1780.<\/p>\n
But the name comes from right in Yarmouth.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t impressed with these small homes when he visited Yarmouth in 1800.<\/p>\n
He unfolds a piece of paper and reads a quotation from Dwight\u2019s book, \u201cTravels in New-England and New-York.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell \u2014 that stuck,\u201d Sachau says. The modest homes with the sloping roofs became known as Cape Cods.<\/p>\n
![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/cape-cod-homes-2-1000x755.jpeg\")
Cover of catalogue, “Popular Cape Cod Colonial Homes: New Ideas by Small Home Architects,” published by Nationwide House Plan Service, Providence, Rhode Island. Undated. (Courtesy of Historic New England)<\/p>\n
In the 20th century, Boston architect Royal Barry Wills propelled an upscale revival of the Cape Cod style.<\/p>\n
But the design was destined to become a middle-class staple.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The style may be named for Cape Cod, but it’s part of architectural history in New England and beyond.<\/p>\n
So \u2014 the next time you see a house that seems to have just the right proportions, ask yourself: \u201cIs it a Cape?\u201d<\/p>\n