AA-2026-F737B3
On the image
Someone spent a great deal of the 1950s convincing this old farmhouse to look older than it was. The clapboards are freshly painted white, the shutters a correct colonial black, and the lawn mowed to the kind of putting-green tightness that only a homeowner with something to prove achieves on a weekend. This is the classic New England "big house, little house, back house, barn" arrangement, where connected additions let a farm family walk from kitchen to cow without stepping outside in a blizzard, and here the barn end has been quietly converted to garage duty, its wide door standing open like it still expects a horse.
The multiple gabled dormers and center chimney mark the original structure as pre-Revolutionary in spirit if not in fact, the sort of house 1950s owners liked to call "early American" whether or not a deed could prove it. Restoring one of these was a point of civic pride in the postwar decade, a way of declaring allegiance to a tidier, more disciplined past just as the rest of the country was pouring concrete for ranch houses.
The second building visible through the trees suggests a small compound, maybe a guest cottage, maybe a caretaker's house, the kind of arrangement that meant somebody's grandparents had done well enough to keep two roofs standing. Nobody in the picture is visible, which is fitting, since the house was clearly the one doing all the performing that day.
Visually related — by likeness
Connected Cape Farmhouse with Ell and Barn, New England, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-F737B3. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/connected-cape-farmhouse-with-ell-and-barn-new-england-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026F737B3,
title = {Connected Cape Farmhouse with Ell and Barn, New England, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-F737B3},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/connected-cape-farmhouse-with-ell-and-barn-new-england-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Connected Cape Farmhouse with Ell and Barn, New England, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-F737B3 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/connected-cape-farmhouse-with-ell-and-barn-new-england-1950s ER -
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