Brookline Slate & Copper Roofing
Slate and copper roofing across Brookline's historic districts and Victorians. Slate restoration, copper flashing, ice-dam repair since 2005.
Brookline carries more locally protected historic districts than almost any community its size in Massachusetts, and a Victorian in Pill Hill answers to different rules than a house two streets over. Art Slate Roofing has worked Brookline 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 district and the era tell us
Brookline built out early and dense, so its rooflines run from Greek Revival and Italianate through a deep stretch of Victorian and Queen Anne into the Colonial Revivals and brick apartment blocks. Coolidge Corner and Washington Square carry a lot of the turn-of-the-century stock, Pill Hill and Cottage Farm hold the older Victorian streets, and the decade a house went up usually decides what belongs back on the roof.
Roofing inside Brookline’s local historic districts
Brookline runs a set of local historic districts under the Brookline Preservation Commission, from Cottage Farm, set up in 1979, and Pill Hill in 1983, through Chestnut Hill North, Graffam-McKay, Harvard Avenue, Lawrence, Wild-Sargent, and Olmsted-Richardson. If your house is inside one, a visible change to the roof goes in front of the commission before the first slate comes off, and the review can cover the material, the color, the flashing, and any new dormer or skylight. We have taken roofs through that kind of review before, and we build the samples and drawings the commission wants so the meeting does not stall your job. If you are not sure whether your street is inside a district, the Town of Brookline maps its local historic districts online, or we will check the parcel for you. Our note on historic roof permits around Boston covers what that review actually asks for.
- 2005 Family-run since
- 4.9★ 23 Google reviews
- 75–150 yr Slate roof lifespan
- In-house Crew — never subcontracted
Licensed & Insured · MA Construction Supervisor · MHIC Registered
Ice dams on Brookline’s Victorian rooflines
The cut-up rooflines that make Brookline’s Victorians distinctive are also where ice dams start. Every valley, dormer, and turret is a low spot that collects melted snow, and the dense street trees keep the roofs cold and shaded long after an open lot has cleared. Attic heat melts the underside, the runoff refreezes at the eave, and the dam forces water back under the slate. On older Brookline homes with original slate and thin ventilation, that is the leak we get called about every winter. We fix the ventilation and the eave flashing rather than just clearing the ice. More on that in our guide to preventing ice dams in New England.