The Cape Cod Style House in the New World

The Cape Cod Style House in the New World The Cape Cod style house is one of the most recognized and beloved architectural designs in America. When British colonists traveled to the New World, they brought a housing style so practical that it endured through the ages. The modern day Cape Cod houses you see in nearly every part of North America are modeled after the rugged architecture of colonial New England. The style is a simple one - some may call it primitive with a rectangular footprint and gable pitched roof.  You will rarely see a porch or decorative embellishments on a traditional Cape Cod home. These houses were designed for easy construction and efficient heating. Low ceilings and a central chimney kept rooms comfortable during cold winters in the northern colonies. The steep roof helped slough off the heavy snow. The rectangular design made additions and expansions an easy task for growing families. Fast Facts: Colonial Cape Characteristics Post and beam, rectangular footprintOne story with additional half story under roofSide gable roof, fairly steepCenter chimneyShingle or clapboard exterior sidingCenter front door, two double-hung windows on each sideLittle ornamentation History The first Cape Cod style homes were built by Puritan colonists who came to America in the late 17th century. They modeled their homes after the half-timbered houses of their English homeland, but adapted the style to the stormy New England weather. Over a few generations, a modest, one- to one-and-a-half-story house with wooden shutters emerged. Reverend Timothy Dwight, a president of Yale University in Connecticut, recognized these houses as he traveled throughout the Massachusetts coastline, where Cape Cod juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. In an 1800 book describing his travels, Dwight is credited with coining the term Cape Cod to describe this prolific class or type of colonial architecture. Traditional, colonial-era homes are easily identifiable - rectangular shape; moderately steep roof pitch with side gables and a narrow roof overhang; one story of living area with a half story of storage area below the roof. Originally they were all constructed of wood and sided in wide clapboard or shingles. The facade had a front door placed at the center or, in a few cases, at the side - multi-paned, double-hung windows with shutters symmetrically surrounded the front door. The exterior siding was originally left unpainted, but then white-with-black-shutters became the standard later on. Homes of the original Puritans had little exterior ornamentation. Cape Cods styles smaller than what is known as double Capes include the single Cape with a facade of two windows to the side of the front door, and the three-quarter Cape with a front door offset from the center chimney allowing only one window on the short side. The rectangular interior could be divided or not, with a large central chimney linked to a fireplace in each room. No doubt the first homes would have been one room, then two rooms - a master bedroom and a living area. Eventually there may have been a center hall in a floor plan of four rooms, with a kitchen addition in the back, separated for fire safety. Certainly a Cape Cod house had hardwood floors that replaced original dirt floors, and what interior trim there was would be painted white - for purity. 20th Century Adaptations Much later, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a renewed interest in Americas past inspired a variety of Colonial Revival styles. Colonial Revival Cape Cod houses became especially popular during the 1930s and later. Developers and architects anticipated a building boom after World War II. Pattern books and catalogs flourished and publications held design competitions for practical, affordable dwellings to be bought by a burgeoning American middle class. The most successful marketeer  who promoted the Cape Cod style is considered to be the architect Royal Barry Wills, a  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-educated marine engineer.  Although Willss designs do indeed breathe sentiment, charm, and even sentimentality, their dominant characteristics are reticence, modesty of scale, and traditional proportions, writes art historian David Gebhard. Their small size and scale exuded puritanical simplicity on the outside and tightly organized spaces on the inside - a combination that Gebhard likens to the inner workings of a marine vessel. Wills won many competitions with his practical house plans. In 1938 a Midwestern family chose a Wills design for being more functional and affordable than a competing design by the famous Frank Lloyd Wright. Houses for Good Living in 1940 and Better Houses for Budgeteers in 1941 were two of Wills most popular pattern books written for all the dreaming men and women waiting for the end of World War II. With floor plans, sketches, and Dollar Savers from an Architects Handbook, Wills spoke to a generation of dreamers, knowing that the U.S. government was willing to back up that dream with GI Bill benefits. Inexpensive and mass-produced, these 1,000-square-foot houses filled a need for the rush of soldiers returning from the war. In New Yorks famous Levittown housing development, factories churned out as many as 30 four-bedroom Cape Cod houses in a single day. Cape Cod house plans were heavily marketed in the 1940s and 1950s. Twentieth century Cape Cod houses share many features with their colonial ancestors, but there are key differences. A modern-day Cape will usually have finished rooms on the second story, with large dormers to expand the living space. With the addition of central heating, the chimney of a 20th century Cape Cod is often more conveniently placed at the side of the house instead of the center. The shutters on modern Cape Cod houses are strictly decorative (they cant be closed during a storm), and the double-hung or casement windows are often single-paned, perhaps with faux grills. As 20th century industry produced more construction materials, exterior siding changed with the times - from traditional wood shingles to clapboard, board-and-batten, cement shingles, brick or stone, and aluminum or vinyl siding. The most modern of adaptations for the 20th century would be the garage facing front so the neighbors knew you owned an automobile. Additional rooms attached to the side or rear created a design that some people have called Minimal Traditional, a very sparse mashup of the Cape Cod and Ranch style houses. Cape Cod Bungalow Cottage Modern-day Cape Cod architecture often mingles with other styles. It is not unusual to find hybrid houses that combine Cape Cod features with Tudor cottage, Ranch styles, Arts and Crafts or Craftsman bungalow. A bungalow is a small home, but its use is often reserved for a more Arts and Crafts design.  A cottage is used more often to amplify the house style described here. The Dictionary of Architecture and Construction defines a Cape Cod cottage as a rectangular frame house with low one-story eaves, white clapboarded or shingle walls, gabled roof, large central chimney, and front door located on one of the long sides; a style frequently used for small houses in the New England colonies during the18th cent. The names we attach to our residential architecture is telling of the times. People who live in small Cape Cod styles homes will rarely use the word cottage to describe where they live. People of means, however, with enough money to have a summer home, might describe their second (or third) home as a cottage - as happened during the Gilded Age with the mansion-cottages of Newport, Rhode Island and elsewhere. Sources Baker, John Milnes. American House Styles: A Concise Guide. Norton, 2002capelinks.com. Cape Cod How Can You Recognize an Original Cape Cod Style House?   capelinks.com/cape-cod/main/entry/how-can-you-recognise-an-original-cape-cod-style-house/Gebhard, David. Royal Barry Wills and the American Colonial Revival. Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 27,  No. 1 (Spring, 1992), The University of Chicago Press, p. 51Goldstein, Karin. The Enduring Cape Cod House. Pilgrim Hall Museum. pilgrimhall.org/pdf/Cape_Cod_House.pdf  Harris, Cyril M. ed. Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. McGraw-Hill, p. 85Library of Congress. Cape Cod Houses Recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey. July 2003. loc.gov/rr/print/list/170_cape.htmlMcAlester, Virginia and Lee. A Field Guide to American Houses. Knopf, 1984, 2013Old House Online. Cape Cod Cottage History of Cape Cod Architecture. August 4, 2010. https://www.oldhouseonline.com/house-tours/original-cape-cod-cottage Walker, Lester. American Shelter: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the American Home. Overlook, 1998

What is a Federal Perkins Loan How Do You Get One

What is a Federal Perkins Loan How Do You Get One SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips There are a lot of great federal aid options out there, for every type of student. The Perkins loan may just be one of many types of federal loans, but it comes with a lot of perks that make it worth an in-depth look.I'll go through all the information you need about this loan program, before telling you how to get your own Perkins loan. What Is the Perkins Loan? Like the Direct Subsidized and Direct Unsubsidized programs, Perkins are government-backed, low-interest loans that are meant to help students pay for school. Certain federal aid programs don't require students to demonstrate financial need as an eligibility requirement, like Direct Unsubsidized loans. The Perkins is meant for students who demonstrate exceptional financial need, however; as such, there are some extra perks built into the loans. Before I talk about some of the benefits of the Perkins loans, I'll talk briefly about how loans usually work. Then, I'll go into more Perkins loans details, and explain how this loan program differs from the norm. What It Means to Take Out a Loan When you take out a loan, by definition, you're borrowing a sum of money (a principle) from a person or institution (a lender), with the promise that you'll pay this money back at a later date. You'll likely also agree to repay extra money in addition to the principle (interest), over a certain time period (the length of the loan). People usually pay back their student loans by making monthly payments after they graduate. A part of the payment covers accrued (accumulated) interest, whereas the rest of it goes towards paying back the principle. Interest accrues on your loan at a certain rate, usually starting when the loan amount is given out to you (disbursed). The higher your interest rate, and the longer it takes you to pay back your loan, the more interest will accrue. Standard repayment terms for federal student loans (unless the loans are quite small) are 120 monthly payments, or 10 years. Finally, interest can also capitalize, or be added to your principle amount. What this ultimately means is that interest is now accruing on a new, larger principle; the bigger the principle, the more interest will accrue. The rate of capitalization depends on your loan, but some student loans capitalize at graduation. As you might have deduced by now, one method of saving money on your loans is to minimize the amount of interest that accrues and/or capitalizes. You'll see in the next section why Perkins loans make this process a little bit easier on student borrowers. Interest may just come to pennies a day, but it can add up to a significant amount over time. What's Unique About Federal Perkins Loans? In the previous section, I noted that interest usually starts accruing when the loan is disbursed. If I take out a loan my freshman fall, interest will accrue through all 4 years of college. When I graduate, I'll owe my principle + 4 years of interest - and depending on the type of loan, this interest may capitalize when I graduate. With Federal Perkins loans, you won't see any interest accrue while you're in school, during grace period, or during a period of deferment. The grace period for a Perkins loan is also a bit longer than the standard: 9 months vs. 6 months, which means another 3 months of no interest post-graduation. Here's an example of how loan repayment might play out. In this example, I have both a Perkins loan and an unsubsidized loan, both disbursed at the beginning of my freshman year. Even though the interest rate is higher for the Perkins loan, you end up paying out a lot more for the unsubsidized loan: Perkins Loan Unsubsidized Loan Interest Rate 5% 4.29% Principle $5,000 $5,000 Balance Due 6 Months Post Graduation $5,000 $5,911 Monthly payment (based on standard 120 month repayment) $53.03 $60.66 Total Amount Paid $6,363.60 $7,279.2 Finally, and perhaps most excitingly, Perkins loans give students the option of loan cancellation or loan forgiveness if they pursue particular job or careerpaths. If you play your cards right, you could walk away without owing any money on your loans. I'll talk more about loan cancellation in the next section. Loan Details The Perkins loan interest rate is currently at 5%, which is only slightly higher than interest rates on Direct Unsubsidized and Direct Subsidized loans. Like I mentioned in the previous section, interest does not accrue during school, grace periods, or deferment periods. There are no other loan fees. Loan money is applied directly to school-related charges (tuition, fees, and on-campus room and board). If there is any money left over after the loan is applied to these charges, you'll receive a refund from your school. You can use this money on any other school-related costs (e.g. transportation, books, personal expenses). Repayment You have 9 months after you leave school, graduate, or drop below half-time status before you have to start making monthly payments on your loan. The standard federal loan repayment option has borrowers making 120 monthly payments (10 years) to pay off the loan in full. Loan Cancellation Cancellation sounds like it would be a bad thing, but when it comes to student loans, cancellation arguably the best thing that can happen. Your Perkins loan debt could be wiped, or canceled, in part or in full if you spend time working in particular fields. There are many different situations that could make you eligible for loan cancellation.Examples of cancellation-eligible positions include law enforcement officer or firefighter, teacher, nurse, medical technician, and even attorney. Factors such as your length of employment, the area you're working in (e.g. if you're serving low-income communities), and the demand for certain services (e.g. if there's a higher demand for teachers in certain subjects) could all affect how much loan cancellation you're eligible for. Working in a cancellation-eligible job would constitute a period of deferment, so no interest would accrue! You can apply for Perkins loan cancellation through your school, or your school's loan servicer.Don't ever assume that your loans will be eligible for cancellation; run everything by your school's financial aid office first, and don't stop making payments until your loan is officially deferred. Loan cancellation won't be right for everybody, but it's a great debt-erasing option for people interested in certain career paths. Perkins Loan Eligibility and Limits As great as the Perkins details sound (especially with the possibility of cancellation), there are unfortunately some eligibility restrictions and limits to keep in mind. In order to be eligible for a Perkins loan, you must: Meet basic federal aid requirements (learn more about these requirements here) Be an undergraduate, graduate, or professional student enrolled in a participating school Demonstrate "exceptional" financial need. Perkins loan borrowers are typically from low-income families; 30% of families with dependent students who took out Perkins loans in 2012 made less than $30,000. The amount of money you can take out in Perkins loans depends on (1) your financial need, and (2) how much money your school can lend. Not everyone who meets basic eligibility requirements will receive Perkins loan options. As such, it's difficult to estimate ahead of time how much money you'll get through the Perkins loan program. Although there's not much you can do to estimate your Perkins loan amount, you can keep loan limits and averages in mind: Maximum undergraduate annual amount: $5,500 Maximum undergraduate lifetime amount: $27,500 Maxiumum graduate annual amount: $8,000 Maximum graduate lifetime amount (includes any undergraduate Perkins loans): $60,000 The average new Perkins loan award is about $2,000, much lower than the annual limits for both undergrads and graduate students. How to Apply Perkins loans sound like pretty good options, right? You can apply for Perkins loans by submitting a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. The application isn't just for Perkins loans - when you submit a FAFSA, you're also considered for Pell Grants and other federal loans. You can get step-by-step instructions for submitting a FAFSA here. Although Perkins loans are government-backed, your Perkins loan lender would be your school, not the US government. Because schools need to have a certain amount of available funds in order to offer these loans to students,not all schools participate in the Perkins loan program. You can find out if a school offers Perkins loans by contacting its financial aid office. As you might have expected, Perkins loan funds tend to be limited, and often run out before the official FAFSA deadline. In order to optimize your chances of getting a Perkins loan, try to submit your FASFA early in the spring semester for the next academic year. For example, if you'd like aid for the 2016-2017 academic year, plan on submitting your FAFSA in January or February of 2016. What's Next? Perkins loans aren't the only federal loans with competitive interest rates. Check out our guide comparing Direct Subsidized and Direct Unsubsidized loans. As great as low interest rates sound, even with the possibility of loan cancellation, there's something even better than money you have to pay back: free money. Learn more about Pell Grants here. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: