Belmont Slate & Copper Roofing

Belmont earned its nickname, the Town of Homes, one careful house at a time, and the roof each one needs depends on the era it was built and where on Belmont Hill it sits. Art Slate Roofing has worked Belmont for over twenty years. The owner walks every roof, we measure on site, and the same in-house crew installs what we quote. On a house that was built for slate, we will not talk you into asphalt.

What the era and the hill tell us

Belmont filled in from the railroad stops outward, so its housing runs from mid-19th-century estates on the slope of Belmont Hill to the Colonial Revivals and early-20th-century homes around Cushing and Waverley Squares. The Pleasant Street district holds the oldest of it, ambitious Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, and Queen Anne houses built on substantial lots. The build date usually decides what belongs back on top.

Roofing inside Belmont’s local historic districts

Belmont keeps four local historic districts: Pleasant Street, Common Street, Richardson Farm, and Thaddeus Frost. The Pleasant Street district, on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979, traces back to 1843, when the Fitchburg Railroad reached the eastern slope of Belmont Hill and Boston families began building summer retreats and year-round homes there. If your house sits inside one of the districts, a visible change to the roof goes in front of the Belmont Historic District Commission before the first slate comes off. We have taken roofs through that kind of review, and we build the material samples and drawings the commission wants so the hearing does not stall your job. If you are not sure whether your street is inside a district, the Town of Belmont publishes the district boundaries and rules online, or we will check the parcel for you.

For the paperwork side, our note on historic roof permits in Boston walks through what this kind of review actually asks for, and our page on historic roof restoration covers the period-correct work itself.

Ice dams on Belmont Hill

The hill that gives Belmont its best views also gives its roofs the hardest winters. Higher, more exposed ground catches more snow and wind, and the mature tree canopy over the older streets keeps north slopes shaded and cold. Snow sits instead of sliding off, attic heat melts it from below, and the runoff refreezes at the cold eave until it backs up under the slate. On older Belmont homes with original slate and undersized ventilation, that is the leak we get called about every February. Clearing the ice is the symptom. We fix the ventilation and the eave flashing that let the dam form. More on that in our guide to preventing ice dams in New England.

Trades we run in Belmont