Shingle

Nickerson Cottage // 1885

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Augustus Nickerson (1860-1928) was a Boston-based accountant and avid cyclist of the Boston Bicycle Club and secretary of the League of American Wheelmen. Nickerson seemingly built this home in Marion around 1885 as a summertime retreat from the stresses of city living, but rented it to other Boston families for supplemental income. The property was sold in 1905 to Martha and Matthew Buckman (1832-1910), President of the University of Vermont 39 years from 1871 to 1910, overseeing dramatic growth for the University, which was one of the first eastern schools to admit women. This Marion home was his summer retreat while classes were out. While the architect is not currently known, it is clearly the work of a well-educated architect of the time, and likely the work of either William Gibbons Preston or Charles Allerton Coolidge, two Boston-based architects who summered in Marion and designed many Shingle style homes there. The home exhibits strong horizontal massing with an elongated sloped roof and is covered with weathered wood shingle sheathing, characteristic of the Shingle Style.

Browne-Hosmer Cottage // 1881

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This Shingle style home in Marion was designed for Reverend William Percy Browne (1838-1901), who was educated at Kenyon College in Ohio alongside John Cotton Brooks, the youngest brother of Phillips Brooks, who would become the Rector of Boston’s Trinity Church and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts. Brooks would hire H.H. Richardson to design Trinity Church in Boston in the early 1870s. From this connection and being members of the St. Botolph Club of Boston, Reverend William Percy Browne and H.H. Richardson began a working relationship designing Browne’s summer cottage in Marion. The legend is that at the club, Browne bet Richardson that he could not design a small house for $2,500. Browne lost. This modest house was completed in 1882 and represented an early, significant example of a Shingle style home in Massachusetts. Browne died in 1901 and the house was sold to Sidney Hosmer, a Boston electrical engineer. Under his ownership, the home was expanded and altered, likely from plans by Charles Allerton Coolidge, Boston architect who summered in Marion. The cottage was eventually purchased by Tabor Academy, who in 2019, pulled a demolition permit for the house. Architects and historians quickly rallied and advocated for the preservation of the cottage, saving it from the wrecking ball, for now. The cottage remains vacant and no definitive plans as of 2026 have been unveiled to sell the property or restore it.


Waters – Dyer Cottage // c.1890

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Benjamin E. Waters (1863-1962) was a local businessman and real estate developer in Marion by the end of the 19th century. He acquired a large property not far from the beach, in the middle of a high-class residential enclave and developed the property, running a small dirt path through the middle, known today as Pie Alley. He built three large Shingle style homes between 1890-1895 and appears to have rented them out to wealthy residents. This residence, the largest, features a broad gambrel roof with saltbox slope towards the rear, dormers, and a wrap-around porch facing Buzzards Bay. The house is entirely clad in cedar shingles, a common sight in this part of town. The home remained part of the larger parcel and was rented out until after WWII, when it was purchased by Holmes M. Dyer (1913-1997), a sales executive for the Acushnet Company of New Bedford. The architect of the home is not widely known, but it is probably the work of William Gibbons Preston or Charles Allerton Coolidge, both prominent Boston architects who summered in Marion and designed many of the Shingle style cottages here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Charles A. Coolidge Cottage // c.1903

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When an architect designs a house for their own use, you know it is going to be special. This is the Charles A. Coolidge Cottage in East Marion, on the South Shore of Massachusetts. American architect, Charles Allerton Coolidge (1858-1936), was born in Boston as a member of a Brahmin family. He graduated from Harvard College in 1877 and studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later entering the office of the well-known firm of Ware & Van Brunt. He later joined the firm of renowned architect Henry Hobson Richardson in 1883 and soon after the death of Richardson in 1886, he formed a partnership with George Shepley and Charles Rutan, two other Richardson architects. Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge went on to become one of the most prominent architecture firms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, performing major residential and institutional work in Boston and across the United States. Charles Coolidge married Julia Shepley of St. Louis, sister of his business partner, in 1889, and the couple would begin planning their summer retreat in the coastal community of Marion. The couple purchased a site already containing a residence and lived there before building this cottage around 1903 in the fashionable Shingle style. The over the years, various out-buildings were constructed on the site for his children’s cottages and other various uses. The property remains part of the Coolidge Family and is a private residence. The Coolidge Cottage is entirely clad in shingles, a hallmark of the Shingle style of architecture, and features broad gambrel roof forms and sweeping porches supported by shingled columns. Photo is courtesy of Lynn Smiledge.

Marion Congregational Chapel // 1885

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Completed in 1885 in the small coastal village of Marion, Massachusetts, the Marion Congregational Chapel was one of the last major gifts from Elizabeth Pitcher Taber (1791–1888), the wealthy widow whose patronage shaped the town’s entire civic landscape. Ms. Taber in her later years had already funded Marion’s library, founded Tabor Academy, and built its academy hall before purchasing a vacant lot on Main Street to build this chapel for her church, the First Congregational Church of Marion. Built in 1885, the chapel is designed in the texturally rich Shingle Style that was then sweeping New England’s coastal towns by the late 19th century with its continuous wood-shingle siding and gabled massing gave it a warmer, more approachable character than the town’s earlier Greek Revival and Italianate landmarks. The chapel stands out for its rubblestone entry tower and the trio of polygonal bays on the primary facade. For its first several years it doubled as Marion’s only real venue for public lectures and amateur theater, an arrangement that reportedly so dismayed Taber over the poor quality of the “worldly theatricals” staged there that she went on to fund a dedicated Music Hall, designed by architect William Gibbons Preston nearby. Given the fact Ms. Taber so-often utilized Preston as architect for her gifts to Marion (and as he was a summer resident here), it is probable that he too designed this Shingle style chapel. The Congregational Chapel stands today as a smaller, later addition to Marion’s Congregational history, which stretches back to the town’s original 1799 meetinghouse (now the Marion General Store) and the Greek Revival church built across the street in 1841 which is still home to the First Congregational Church of Marion.


George P. Lawrence Summer House // 1897

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On the eastern shore of Lake Massapoag in Sharon, Massachusetts, the George P. Lawrence Summer House is an excellent and rare preserved example of a late 19th century Victorian summer house in the suburban town. The residence was built in 1897 for George Pelton Lawrence (1859-1917) and his wife, Belle, as a summer retreat from their primary residence in North Adams in Western Massachusetts. George P. Lawrence was an attorney who was appointed as a district court judge before entering the political arena where he became a state senator. The couple spent summers at this beautiful Shingle/Colonial Revival style residence until Congressman Lawrence’s death in 1917. On November 21, 1917, Lawrence jumped out of his eighth-floor New York City window at the Hotel Belmont , committing suicide. In his room, he left a note saying that he “could not stand the pressure anymore”. The Sharon property remained in the family until the 1940s and has been modernized, while maintaining its character. 

Charles F. Roper House // c.1890

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Charles Frederick Roper (1847-1916) was a machinist and inventor who moved to Hopedale, Massachusetts, where he found employment from the Draper Corporation. His inventions were important for the company, and included loom machinery, air supply for motors to prevent overheating, and grinding machines. Before his death, Charles Roper had over 100 patents and from his success, he afforded one of the finest Victorian homes in Hopedale. In around 1890, Charles Roper had this Shingle style residence built on Freedom Street from plans by Robert Allen Cook, a Milford-based architect who was a favorite of the Drapers. The residence sits on a rubblestone first floor with cedar shingles above.

Mary S. Hartford House // 1890

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This charming Shingle style bungalow at the corner of Harley and Walton streets in Dorchester’s Ashmont Hill neighborhood, was built around 1890 for Ms. Mary S. Hartford. Mary Hartford (1840-1910) was the mother of famed American painter, Edmund Charles Tarbell, and the wife of Edmund Whitney Tarbell, who died in 1863 after contracting typhoid fever while serving in the Civil War. After the death of her husband, Mary sent her son to live in Groton, Massachusetts with his grandparents to raise them as she remarried to David Francis Hartford, a shoe manufacturer. David and Mary lived nearby on Alban Street, and rented this and other houses to tenants for supplemental income. Local architect Edwin J. Lewis furnished plans for the house as a prototypical example of the Shingle style. Mary died in 1910 and in 1917, David Hartford, as his wife’s executor, deeded this property at 17 Harley Street to Emma C. Rich, the wife of George M. Rich, a Boston banker. The house is excellently preserved, even down to the appropriate brown stained shingles.

Gallup Farm Carriage House // 1906

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This handsome Shingle style building was constructed in 1906 as a carriage house of a larger farm property in Scotland, Connecticut. The barn is said to have been built for Archie Gallup, who purchased the old Manning farm just west of the town green in Scotland. The 1 1/2-story carriage-house with a gambrel-roof stands out for its principal entry of paneled wooden doors and above, a large, flared hood featuring two pedimented gable-dormers. The entire building is clad with varied shingles to add complexity to the design, catching the attention of all who drive by.

New Ipswich Public Library // 1895

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The New Ipswich Public Library is a one-story Shingle style building on Main Street in the charming village of New Ipswich, New Hampshire. The library building was likely designed by Ernest M. A. Machado, one of the best, and relatively unknown architects of the late 19th and early 20th century in Salem. The entrance which faces the side, is flanked by two diamond-pane windows, which can also be found on the primary facade. A special ten-light vertical window is recessed within a shingled depression in the gable, which adds some complexity to the design.

Frederick & Arabella Holden House // 1893

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The Frederick & Arabella Holden House sits on Aspinwall Avenue in the Brookline Village neighborhood of Brookline, Massachusetts. Built in 1893, the excellently designed Shingle style dwelling was actually built on speculation by developers, and sold upon completion to the couple. Fred G. Holden (1858-1927) was a marble dealer who managed the Boston Marble Company and had connections in his home state, Vermont for the highest quality marble to sell around Boston, largely for building products and grave memorials. Arabella Proctor Holden (1859-1905) was born in Cavendish, Vermont, as the eldest daughter of Redfield Proctor, 37th Governor of Vermont and the founder of the Vermont Marble Company, the largest such company in the world. I could not find the architect of the house, so any more information, let me know. I’d love to solve the mystery!

Soldier’s Memorial Library of Mansfield // 1901

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Arguably the most beautiful building in Mansfield, Massachusetts is the Soldier’s Memorial Library in the center of town. Constructed in 1901, the Soldiers’ Memorial Library is a well-preserved example of 19th
century High Victorian architecture with Shingle style elements, designed by the prominent Boston architectural firm of Peabody & Stearns. In as early as 1896, the idea of constructing a building as a memorial to the soldiers who died in the Civil War had prominent local members of the community. In 1898, a relatively new resident in town, Mrs. Elizabeth Noble, donated a parcel of land for the building with the stipulation that the first floor was to be used as a library and the second floor as an “audience room”,
banquet room, and kitchen for the use of the G.A.R. The architects created one of their most significant civic buildings with an interesting juxtaposition of Gothic elements with Shingle style details. The Gothic lancet window and door surround blends surprisingly well with the use of rubblestone on the first story with buttresses and shingle siding above which give the building a fortress-like appearance.

McCrea Cottage // 1891

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In 1891, Laura Denby McCrea, a wealthy widow based Philadelphia, sought to maintain her social standing all year by building a summer cottage on Grindstone Neck, a summer colony in Winter Harbor, Maine. She was one of the first to build a cottage here, and she hired renowned architect Wilson Eyre to furnish plans for the rustic home. The Shingle style house is dominated by its massive gambrel roof and was historically clad entirely with wood shingles (asphalt shingles have since replaced cedar at the roof).

Tonandowa Cottage // c.1892

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One of the two largest summer “cottages” on Grindstone Neck, Winter Harbor, Maine is this massive Shingled mansion overlooking Frenchman’s Bay. Due to its scale and design, the house possibly replaced a more modest cottage in the early 20th century. The “cottage” was owned by Samuel Price Wetherill, a Philadelphia-based manufacturer and businessman. Wetherill spent most of his time at a Rittenhouse Square Beaux Arts mansion in Philadelphia, which after his death, was purchased by the Philadelphia Art Alliance. The Wetherills hosted lavish events in the mansion and clearly wanted to make a statement with their summer home, which rivals almost any “cottage” in the more prestigious Bar Harbor over the bay.

Samuel P. Tilton Cottage // 1880

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One of the most well-designed and least-pretentious summer cottages in Newport is this charming dwelling on a dead end street. The Samuel P. Tilton Cottage was designed in 1880 by the prestigious firm of McKim, Mead & White as an idiosyncratic blending of Queen Anne and Shingle architectural styles. Mr. Tilton was a milliner (maker and seller of women’s hats) with stores in Boston and Paris, France. He had this cottage built to summer close to the nation’s wealthiest, likely marketing some hats at elaborate Gilded Age events. The facade is assertively Queen Anne with its massing and decorative panels, with shingled side elevation seemingly sprouting from the earth. The architectural terminology for these unique decorative panels is “sgraffito” where here, cement or plaster siding is set and adorned with shells, pebbles, colored glass, and pieces of coal into a cartouche design. The house is one of the finest in Newport, and shows that bigger isn’t always better!