Noted architect Thomas Kligerman celebrates the magic of summer, exploring the seaside setting and design of secluded cottages facing the Atlantic along the Rhode Island coast
Summer by the Sea is the first book to focus on the seaside cottages of Rhode Island, the birthplace of the shingle style, lauded as the ‘architecture of the American summer’. This in-depth tour of seaside communities begins with Watch Hill and moves along the coast, weaving together the history of the state, the evolution of the shingle style, and descriptions of the geology and wildlife that create a unique sense of place.
Each chapter explores a different town - Watch Hill, Weekapaug, Haversham, Block Island, Saunderstown, Jamestown, Middletown, Little Compton - capturing landscape and seascape and studying both historic and contemporary shingle style designs.
Featured are works by 19th century masters Calvert Vaux and Charles L. Bevins, new houses by Jens Risom, Gil Schafer, and Peter Bohlin, and vernacular cottages by unknown builders that have descended through generations of the same family. The most recent is Tom Kligerman’s own house in Weekapaug, a gabled, shingled form that he describes as ‘an architectural madeleine for my family,’ evoking the sounds and scents of his own boyhood summers by the sea.
