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Possibly the oldest surviving house in the U.S. with a gambrel roof is the c. 1677–78 Peter Tufts House. The oldest surviving framed house in North America, the Fairbanks House, has an ell with a gambrel roof, but this roof was a later addition. Claims to the origin of the gambrel roof form in North America include:
The house is a 1½ story frame structure with a shingle roof. The house has a gable roof with a shed dormer. Windows are one-over-one sashes. Access to the cellar is through an exterior metal bulkhead door on a concrete base; the concrete bears the initials "E.V.R." The house interior comprises three rooms on the first floor and two in the attic.
The mansion has two-and-a-half stories, topped with a cupola or belvedere at its center, with a finial on its roof. The original structure measures 45 feet square, and has a stone foundation. The entranceway to the house is arched and paneled. It windows have ornamented stilted arch hood molding. The house's bracketed cornice is ornate as well. [5]
Used for its modern meaning of "gambrel-roofed house", the term does not reflect the fact that housing styles in Dutch-founded communities in New York evolved over time. In the Hudson Valley, for example, the use of brick, or brick and stone is perhaps more characteristic of Dutch Colonial houses than is their use of a gambrel roof.
A mansard roof on the Château de Dampierre, by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, great-nephew of François Mansart. A mansard or mansard roof (also called French roof or curb roof) is a multi-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper, and often punctured by dormer windows.
This effect—of the building as an envelope of space, rather than a great mass, was enhanced by the visual tautness of the flat shingled surfaces, the horizontal shape of many shingle style houses, and the emphasis on horizontal continuity, both in exterior details and in the flow of spaces within the houses.
The house stands set back from the west side of the road, opposite a gambrel-roofed barn and silo set close to the road. The house is a five-bay gambrel-roofed wood frame structure, with two interior chimneys and clapboard siding. The front and rear roof faces have three-bay shed-roof dormers extending from the steep portion of the roof.
It is thought to have been built between 1677 and 1678. Past historians considered it to be the oldest brick house in the United States, although that distinction belongs to Bacon's Castle, the 1665 plantation home of Virginian Arthur Allen. [2] [3] It is also believed to be, possibly, the oldest surviving house in the U.S. with a gambrel roof.