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Sketch of basic architectural house styles with common period dates Guide to Roof Age, Style, & Choices of Roofing Materials
Determinng the Age of a Building

Roof age & architectural style guide: Here we provide a photo guide and a series of detailed descriptive articles that offer guidance in determining the age of a building and its roof by examination of the choices of roofing materials as well as the building roof architectural style.

The age of a building or its individual components can sometimes be determined quite accurately by documentation, but when documents are not readily available, visual clues such as those available during a professional home inspection can still determine when a house was built by examining its components, building materials, even nails, fasteners, and types of saw cuts on lumber.

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Roofing Materials as Indicators of Building Age

PHOTO of wood shingle roof, Key West Florida, adjacent to Hemingway's house

Wood shingle roofing has been in use for hundreds of years in the U.S. and Europe.

But an inspection of interior and exterior roofing details can indicate the probable age of a wood roof (which can last up to 40 years) as well as the roofing history of the building, the number and types of roofing layers, and related house-age-determination details.

The wood shingle roof shown in the photo below is on a building in Key West, Florida, adjacent to the Hemingway house, viewed from the Key West tower. Notice the absence of lichens on the wood shingles in the roof area below the metal-flashed rooftop tower?

We discuss here various roofing materials (Wood, slate, asphalt shingles (in several generations), clay tile, metal roofing (several styles and generations), and how they assist in finding The age of a building below.

History and Dates of Use of Various Roofing Materials

This article explains the eras of use of different types of roofing materials as an aid to understanding the history and age of buildings

If you are trying to determine the age and condition of a particular roof covering, please see AGE OF ROOFING.

If you need to see a complete index to articles describing all types of building roofing materials & methods

see ROOFING INSPECTION & REPAIR

Cement Board & Fiber Cement Roofing Products

Exterior Siding & Roofing Using Asbestos Cement included asbestos cement shingles, asbestos cement siding, corrugated asbestos-cement roofing.

See

Other fiber cement materials used in construction included

Also see

Modern Cement Board & Fiber Cement Products

Cement board is a non-structural building sheathing material which in its contemporary form is made from Portland cement covered with a reinforced fiberglass mesh fabric. Cement board is used as a tile backer or a backer board for stucco applications on buildings. Current producers include Custom Building Products (WonderBoard™) and US Gypsum (Durock™).

Panels made of a mixture of cement and wood fibers are produced for building siding by James Hardi (Hardi-panel and Cemplank™), and CertainTeed (Weatherboard™).

Sketch of basic architectural house styles with common period dates

Clues to building age include 

these examples which we expand and detail in text and articles below.

Visual clues pointed out by a home inspector or available to any careful building inspector can help indicate the age of a building.

In addition to examining the roofing material, a look at roof framing, lumber marks, even types of fasteners all can relate the roof age to the building age and give information about both. More examples of this approach to identifying building architectural style, roof style, roof age and building age are in these articles:

Keep in mind that even when we can identify specific types of building materials and building methods, precise dating of the time of construction of a building remains difficult: old building materials were often re-used, so beams, siding, and other components may appear in a building built later than when the materials were first made.

Also, in the U.S. various states had machines for making cut nails, screws, and sawmills at different times. For example, New York State was industrialized earlier than some western or southern states, so machine-made nails appear earlier in New York than elsewhere.

Historic Roofing Materials & Roof Age

History and Dates of Use of Various Roofing Materials

Familiarity with roofing materials used on historic buildings and with the history of manufacture of roofing materials can help determine the age of a building as well as the more practical question of age of and remaining life of a roof.

This article series explains the eras of use of different types of roofing materials as an aid to understanding the history and age of buildings.

The oldest roofing materials, in use since prehistoric times were stone or stone slabs, and slate. From Roman times clay roof tiles were widely-used and remain in-use today as a durable roof material.

You will read in the Reynolds shingle patents below that when shifting from the more-rigid traditional roof shingles of wood and their heavier brothers slate, stone, or clay tiles to a lighter and more-flexible asphalt roof shingle, the inventors had to cope with the problems of wind-uplift and durability that could accompany a flexible roof covering.

Early History of Asphalt Roof Shingles & the H.M. Reynolds Shingle Company

Harry M. Reynolds was one of the early if not earliest producer of asphalt shingles in the U.S.

Green asphalt roof shingles from an H.M. Reynolds Shingle Co. catalog circa 1910 cited & discussed at Inspectapedia.com ...

Image above: H.M. Reynolds Shingle Co., showing green colored asphalt shingle roof in a 1910 catalog, retrieved 2021/08/05, original source: https://archive.org/details/HMReynoldsShingleCo

H.M. Reynolds was established in Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S., in 1868. The image below shows that the company's shngles were approved by the Board of Fire Underwriters (for fire resistance), and were available in red, green, and blue-black.

Green asphalt roof shingles from an H.M. Reynolds Shingle Co. catalog circa 1910 cited & discussed at Inspectapedia.com

Remarkably the little advertising flyer shown above includes a note that this H.M. Reyolds paper and asphalt-shingle-sample brouchure could be folded together and blown-throug to play a tune or to make a noise like a parrot or rooster! The flyer's patent gives it an earliest-possible date of April 1909.

HM Reynolds 1914 hexagonal shingle patent cited & discussed at InspectApedia.com

Above Harry M. Reynolds 1914 asphalt shingle patent for hexagonal shingle shapes; we added colors to illustrate the shingle side-lap pattern.

HM Reynolds interlocking shingle patent cited & discussed at InspectApedia.com

 

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