By Gretchen A. Peck

By virtue of Colonial-period settlements and rapid growth and development measured in centuries, New England has some of the broadest arrays of architectural housing styles represented here—simplistic saltboxes, farmhouses, Cape Cods, Victorians, Greek Revivals, you name it. But if there’s a “classic New England style,” which debuted here and became adopted in other states across the country, it’s the “shingle-style home.”

Shingle-style houses are iconic to the New England coastline. They speak to the pragmatism of coastal dwellers who’ve appreciated architectural character but also durability and resilience in the corrosive salt-air climate.

Vincent Scully, an architectural historian and professor at Yale University, popularized the term “shingle style” in the 1950s, more than a half-century after this style of home first debuted in New England.

As the name implies, shingles are essential to the architectural style. They’re often made of red cedar or white cedar. They’re distinctive in not just color but in durability, as well—red cedar being the more durable of the two, and often easier to install.

It’s also important to note that “cedar shingles” and “cedar shake” are not interchangeable terms. Cedar shingles are milled to be flat, like a finished thin board, while cedar shake is intentionally less uniform. They differ in size and texture, often with undulating ridges across the surfaces and edges.

Cedar applications

Shake is commonly used for roofing applications, while cedar shingles are designed to be used as siding, Pete Mountzoures explained. Mountzoures has an encyclopedic knowledge of cedar for housing applications. He’s the semi-retired owner of P. L. Mountzoures Contracting—the family-owned business he founded in 1982, which carries on today from its headquarters on Four Mile River Road in Old Lyme.

The origin story of Mountzoures’ business began when he was working summer jobs as a house painter.

“I pretty much got started with a bucket, a paintbrush, a scraper, a ladder and a car,” he said.

After going off to college and living outside of the region, he returned to southeast Connecticut to be close to his family and to make his own home in Niantic. His work as a house painter began to evolve. Often, a painting job would reveal problems with rotted wood trim and siding that needed to be repaired before it could be properly painted over. That led him to hone his skills as a carpenter and ultimately, his business became a full-service roofing and siding contractor, as well. It grew to a crew of 20, with a fleet of trucks.

Though his team installed cedar shingle siding from time to time, mainly on homes in affluent communities on the coast and out on Fishers Island, their specialty was cedar shake roofs. They preferred using shake milled in Canada, made of mature cedar trees. Newer-growth cedar tends to dry out and shrink up, Mountzoures explained. Copper flashing not only helps to move water down the roof, it also acts an antifungal agent and helps to keep moss and algae from building up on the cedar material.

Cedar shake and shingles aren’t inexpensive. By comparison, he said, asphalt shingles are a mere fraction of the cost. However, cedar affords a number of benefits. They’re particularly rain and wind resistant—capable of withstanding hurricane-force winds. In an article on This Old House’s website, General Contractor Tom Silva wrote, “White cedar shingles typically have a lifespan of up to 25 years, depending on the local climate and maintenance practices. Homes in harsh coastal environments may experience a shorter lifespan due to constant exposure to salt, wind and moisture.”

In recent years, the materials market has expanded to include cement-board alternatives to cedar shingles, which have the look of cedar but without the natural properties and benefits.

Authentic cedar shingles are graded according to aesthetics. A “Grade A” shingle has the fewest knots or other blemishes. Installing them is akin to creating a mosaic—each piece differing in width, carefully selected, measured and placed for precision, cut to size and then affixed so the bottom edge is level with its row. Small gaps are purposely placed between shingles, allowing them to absorb water, expand and contract.

For homeowners interested in upgrading their homes to shingle siding or a shake roof, Mountzoures recommended a tremendous installation timesaver: buy them pre-treated and pre-stained.

Dan Cooper, a writer at Period-Homes.com, authored a 2017 article on the history of shingle-style homes, referring to the introduction of the style as a “sea change in New England architecture.”

“The revolutionary aspect of the Shingle style was much greater than its exterior finish materials; it introduced an organicism to a building’s overall structure and an emphasis on its horizontal planes,” Cooper wrote. “These new-style homes melded into their physical surroundings, and, instead of being a palace imposed upon a plain, they embraced the site upon which they were built, creating a much softer transition from natural to build environment.”