BRACE YOURSELF In the 1870s, when DC decided all U.S. Life-Saving Stations should be uniform, the final blueprints followed a popular national style filled with decorative Gothic elements. “Some people call it Stick Style,” says Penne Sandbeck. “Because of the narrow vertical siding, which looked like sticks. But with the rise of factory and ready-to-assemble ornamentation, everyone was getting a little giddy with stuff.” Of all the fancy features, “bracketed gables” were the most obvious. Today, they’re the easiest to recreate. (Why bother siding a whole house in cedar when you can slap together two sticks?) And while each bracket’s location may look custom-made to hold down a roof in a hurricane, it was never intended to help your house handle the weather. “It’s not functional at all,” says Sandbeck. “It’s all decorative.”
PILING IT HIGH You’d be hard-pressed to find a more romanticized piece of local lumber than the humble piling. To some, they’re the foundational equivalent of a Zen philosopher — bending with brute winds instead of breaking. Others see them as the best way to beat the next Biblical flood. But as anyone who’s weathered a winter cyclone will attest, these sturdy timbers still shiver like hell. And while the earliest oceanfront houses stood up on stilts, they were elevated only half as high. So what pushed them taller? “That really came about with federal flood insurance in the late ’60s,” Wilson explains. “In order to qualify, you had to elevate the house this many times the flood height — maybe six feet above the land. But because of cars, you might as well go eight feet and drive under.” Today, every beach box has plenty of room to play underneath, all thanks to the federal government — and Henry Ford.
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SHAKY LOGIC If there’s a design point that outclasses stilts for local status, it’s the “cedar shake.” Known for its weathered charm — and long-term durability — this scaly exterior can add a layer of Outer Banks street cred to any construction. And yet, they’re not local at all. In fact, they’re not even “shakes.” “Shakes are hand-split, with different thicknesses all throughout,” says John Wilson. “They’re what’s on Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. Here, we have always used shingles. Evenly sawn, milled shingles — each one has the same thickness at the bottom, the same narrowness at the top, and the shingle beside it is very much the same.” According to Catherine Bishir, the shingle resurgence actually started in New England in 1870 and swept through NC roughly 20 years later, where they “were well-suited to the rigorous weather of the Outer Banks.” That’s because we went on to add our own personal touches. Says Wilson, “Outer Bankers had built boats for 100 years, so they knew which wood had oils to preserve and protect — mostly juniper and cedar. So, wood shingles were the logical thing to do.” A century-and-ahalf later, it still is.
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