Wychmere Rise

Wychmere Rise is in a village that surrounds three small harbors. Wychmere Harbor, a commercial fishing port as well as a beloved base for recreation, is at the center. A view of the harbor—and its famous skyline of Shingle Style homes, inns, and fishermans’ shacks—is coveted. On one side of the basin is a neighborhood of mid 20th century Capes. Wychmere Rise is an addition to that neighborhood. It faces the harbor on one side and the neighborhood on another. With its vertical and asymmetrical disposition toward the harbor, and its horizontal “Cape” disposition toward the neighborhood, the home mediates between the more eclectic houses on the harbor and the Capes beyond. Wychmere Rise is a “Cape,” however, with a twist. Its primary street-facing typology follows the Cape diagram (one story facade with a low eave and dormers above) but the proportions and details are exaggerated and unexpected. The windows are over-sized. The shutters have unusually large louver blades. The columns at the entry porch are broad, flat, and stretched far apart. The dormer is almost too big for the roof on which it sits. These distortions from the original type move the house away from being just a Cape into being emphatically a Cape—both an actual Cape and a representation of “Cape” as a house type.