In the late nineteenth century, the Shingle Style blossomed as a free-spirited adaption of the nostalgic Colonial Revival to the new leisure haunts and recreational pastimes of the privileged members of a rapidly industrializing society. It proved especially popular and enduring along the coastlines of New York and New England, where the well-to-do built summer cottages cooled by wholesome ocean breezes. After a period of eclipse, this uniquely American form of architecture was rediscovered in the mid-twentieth century and has inspired several generations of architects to reinterpret the innovations of the Shingle Style—and its reassuringly traditional imagery—for contemporary life, often in the same resort settings where the Shingle Style originally flourished.

Summer Houses by the Sea: The Shingle Style is a celebration of these houses and their romantic seaside settings, from Montauk to Maine. With Bret Morgan’s stunning photography and with informative and engaging text, this volume documents twenty-two of the finest examples of these structures, both old and new. Included are cottages designed by the original masters of the Shingle Style—William Ralph Emerson, John Calvin Stevens, Peabody & Stearns, and McKim, Mead & White—as well as the restoration of East Hampton’s fabled Grey Gardens, and the painstaking reconstruction of Kragsyde—the most celebrated of all Shingle Style houses—on a remote island off the coast of Maine.