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The Story Behind Saltbox Architecture
Saltbox homes can convey years of American colonial history in a single glance. With distinctive high pitched asymmetrical roofs, and flat, unadorned exteriors, these homes show how people lived in the nation’s earliest days, between the early sixteenth and late 17th centuries, adjusting their homes as needed to form things easier. As a result of of their distinctive features, Saltbox homes are also instantly recognizable, and among the long-lasting residences of the Northeast coast.
Like Cape Cod homes of the same era, Saltbox homes originated in New England and Atlantic Canada as homes for European settlers. These buildings were straightforward in style, with rectangular exteriors, high pitched, gabled roofs, and plain central entrances – in many ways that precisely like Cape Cod homes, but with extra components to accommodate the ever-evolving nature of colonial life. Saltboxes were also sometimes situated farther inland than Cape Cods, which helped encourage their more advanced designs.
Saltbox homes got their name because they looked like the big asymmetrical wood saltboxes everyone employed in colonial times. This comparison grew even stronger over the years as several of the initial Saltboxes modified form – several Saltbox dwellers added lean-tos on the backs of their houses, mainly for storage functions, extending the already lopsided roof line. The resulting form, also referred to as a “Catslide,” was nearly triangular, with one long roof slope plunging 2 and a 0.5 stories from the ridge virtually to ground level, and a short, steep slope nearly parallel with the wall on the other side. Other early Saltboxes were merely ancient Cape Cods with an extra lean-to, as exemplified by the Ephraim Hawley House, a famous Connecticut Saltbox engineered in the 1680s, and modified over the decades. Modern and preserved antique Saltbox homes tend to create full use of this further house at the rear, with open floor plans allowing rooms to blend easily into one another.
Most Saltbox homes were engineered using ancient post and beam methods, with metal nails used sparingly as a result of of their high cost. Exterior walls are usually very straightforward, featuring shingle or clapboard siding.
While the Saltbox vogue originated and was used primarily for homes, modern builders have custom-made the form for alternative purposes like churches and university campus buildings.
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