What is a Saltbox House?
According to the Library of Congress, it’s a Colonial style of architecture which originated in New England. Saltboxes are frame houses with two stories in front and one in back, having a pitched roof with unequal sides, being short and high in front and long and low in back. The front of the house is flat and the rear roof line is steeply sloped. The simplicity and strength of this design, first seen around 1650, continues to make saltbox houses popular today. The saltbox shape may have developed because it is a good response to cold New England winters. When oriented with their fronts to the south or south-west, saltbox homes expose their largest exterior wall and most windows to the warmth of the sun. The Library of Congress list of Saltbox home designs, shown in photos and measured drawings, includes seventy houses homes built in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia. The Historic American Building Survey is a joint effort of
A saltbox house is a type of frame house which is distinguished by having two stories in the front, and one story in the back. This architectural style emerged in New England around 1630, and saltbox homes were built well through the mid-1800s. Today, New England homeowners sometimes restore antique saltbox houses to live in, and several are also maintained by the United States Park Service, for visitors who want to see what life in Colonial New England was like. Several characteristics can be used to define a saltbox house, in addition to the uneven arrangement of stories. Saltbox houses are flat in the front, with a central chimney set square in the middle of the roofline. The roof is asymmetrical, with a short, steep roof in front, and a much longer, sloping roof in the back which accommodates the one story extension of the home. Saltboxes are also traditionally made with wooden framing, and they are often covered in clapboard siding. The name of this style of architecture to refers
It is a Colonial style of architecture which originated in New England. Saltboxes are frame houses with two stories in front and one in back, having a pitched roof with unequal sides, being short and high in front and long and low in back. The front of the house is flat and the rear roof line is steeply sloped. The sturdy central chimney is a simple but effective focal point. The simplicity and strength of this design, first seen around 1650, continues to make saltbox houses popular today. Listed below are representative images of saltbox houses found in the Historic American Buildings Survey collection. (Saltbox houses employ timber-frame construction; see the separate Timber-frame Houses reference aid for a fuller selection of HABS-documented sites that are especially good examples of that construction method.) Select the small image to view a larger version. Select the Call Number of the structure to retrieve, via the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), a bibliographic rec
