The Cape Cod cottage has been one of America's most popular home styles for almost four hundred years. While a perennial domestic favorite, historians have long ignored the modest Cape Cod, relegating it to a vernacular footnote along with barns and mills. The Cape Cod Cottage follows the uniquely American house type from its earliest beginnings in the colonial period, through its spread across New England, to its embrace as a suburban ideal in the twentieth century, and its reinterpretation by contemporary architects. Historical images of lost Capes augment beautiful new photographs taken specifically for the book. As a tribute to a special house, this book is an appeal to preserve the Cape's legacy and an essential document of this unique architectural icon.