As spring approaches and thoughts of summer begin to float through my mind, it’s no surprise I drift to images of shingle style homes and salty ocean surf. Spending summers at the coast has been a constant in my family’s life. Barely eight months old when I first experienced beaches on the east coast, there’s not been a single summer of my life since when I’ve not been on their soft sands, smelling that fresh sea air!
Always in my memories are the houses, those wonderful shingle structures that sit magnificently along the coastline, like royalty from the age of opulence. My love of shingle style architecture was formed on those beaches of my youth and has remained with me to this day. 
Always present in these shingle style homes are the following features: weathered shingles with a complimenting trim color, most often bright white but sometimes a deep hunter green or rich New England red, less often a soft turquoise or seashell pink. Great windows; always employing grille work but often varying in shape and design as seen in the picture below. Also, excellent use of “massing”, always with dormers, porches, turrets, and/or conservatories and wonderful use of decorative ornamentation such as intricate molding and trim detail.
Most of these homes are not small and believe it or not, that creates a problem. To make the house look like it makes sense, good architects and builders employed tricks of the trade such as massing, i.e. building the house to look as though it had been added onto over time by using different styles, shapes and sizes to the faux additions.
Not all shingle style homes in the Hampton’s are huge, and while most are sided with shingles, some don’t use the weather and time to achieve their dark color. Mind you, these are by no means small homes, they just look smaller in comparison to the mansions which surround them.
The shingle style home below is actually not in The Hampton’s, it’s on the coast of Rhode Island, built in 2006. I include it for two reasons; first to show that, done correctly, new shingle style construction can mimic the same ‘tricks’ used by the original builders of the style and more importantly, to emphasize the use of the post & beam structure as the skeleton of the house. The originals, built at the turn of the century, were ALL built utilizing the post & beam method, affording larger open interior spaces and the ability to place windows and “additions” as the style demaded. This new shingle style was built with a post and beam frame as well. The look of additions is on purpose, but in actually the structure came to be all at one time.
Hi, would it be possible for you to tell me who the architect is of the third home pictured? Any info would be greatly appreciated!
Hi Melissa,
I trying to hunt down the info you required, but in the meantime you can check out the post on Reckless Bliss http://recklessbliss.blogspot.com/2010/04/hamptons-shingle-style-homes.html
as this house is used on that blog, as well.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to search!
BeamBabe
Where can I get info on building plans for the 3rd house down?
Hello Kendall, The house you expressed interest in is located in Greenwich, CT. It was built in 2000, was for sale in 2010 for just shy of 6 mil and is over 10,000 sq ft. The architectural firm (who owns all rights to the plans) is most likely on file with the town of Greenwich, CT. I do not know the name of the firm. Hope this helps. BeamBabe