Somerville Slate & Copper Roofing

Somerville is the densest city in New England, a city of seven hills built out in two- and three-family Victorians and early-1900s triple-deckers, and most of them were slate-roofed to begin with. Art Slate Roofing has worked Somerville 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 square and the era tell us

Somerville grew fast between the 1840s and the early 1900s, so its housing runs from mid-century Victorians on the hills to the triple-deckers that filled the flat land later. The Spring Hill streets hold Greek Revival houses next to Second Empire, Italianate, Gothic Revival, and Queen Anne Victorians. Davis Square runs to mansard Victorians. The build date and the block usually decide what belongs back on top.

Roofing under the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission

Somerville protects its oldest streets on two fronts. Its local historic districts, including Prospect Hill, designated in 1985, put any visible roof change in front of the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission before the first slate comes off. The Spring Hill area holds one of the best-preserved 19th-century residential streetscapes in the city, with Greek Revival and Victorian houses from the 1845 to 1870 build-out. On top of that, the city runs a demolition review on buildings 75 years or older outside the districts, which covers most of Somerville’s housing. A same-material re-roof usually clears, but a mansard tear-off or a roofline change can pull the job into review. We have worked with the Somerville commission before, and we build the samples and drawings it wants so the hearing does not stall your job. If you are not sure whether your address is covered, the Somerville Historic Preservation office publishes the district rules online, or we will check the parcel for you.

See how that plays out on a real roof: our Davis Square mansard slate project, and for the paperwork side, our note on historic roof permits in Boston walks through what the review asks for.

Ice dams on Somerville’s packed hills

The same density that defines Somerville works against its roofs in winter. Triple-deckers sit wall to wall, so snow that lands between two buildings gets no sun and has nowhere to shed. Attic heat melts it from below, the runoff refreezes at the cold eave, and the dam that builds up forces water back under the slate and into shared gutters that serve two homes at once. The mansard decks on the hills hold snow like a tray, and the shaded north slopes stay frozen long after an open lot has cleared. 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 Somerville