The Shingle style home falls under the family of Victorian architecture. Most were built between 1880 and 1900, but never gain popularity to match that of the Queen Anne style. The name itself describes the dominating finish veneer found in the style of home. Victorian Shingle architecture do not place emphasizes on elaborate detailing around the doors, windows, cornice, and other design elements as commonly seen in traditional Victorian homes; rather, it focus on the design of complex shapes and unifying the uncommon with a smooth veneer finish.
The shingle house style is a unique American form of other traditions. It incorporates elements from the Queen Anne architecture, Richardsonian Romanesque architecture, and colonial revival. Wide porches, asymmetrical forms, and shingled surfaces are from the Queen Anne influence while sculpted shapes, Romanesque arches, and rough faced square stone migrated from the Richardsonian Romanesque style. From the colonial revival came the gambrel roofs, classical columns, and palladian windows often used in the gable.
A typical shingle style design has an asymmetrical facade with multilevel eaves. Walls are finished in shingles with no interruption of corner boards. Roofs in general are steeply pitched and have intersecting cross gables. Large porches are common but, a porch may be omitted or small in scale. Porch supports are either thin wooden post, classical columns, or wide piers of shingle or stone finish. Towers are found in some examples of shingle houses. The towers are usually bulged or less than fully developed with the roof merging into the main house. Dormers are often present usually being gabled; however, hipped, curved, eyebrow-ed, shed, and polygonal dormers are other types that have been incorporated into the shingle architectural style.