Architect Paul Masi’s Saltbox Cottage on Block Island Serves as a Summertime Family Escape

Block Island, Rhode Island

Photo © Bates Masi + Architects
Mohegan Trail.

Architects & Firms

This is the third project in a special In Focus series profiling contemporary shingled cottages. The two other featured projects in the series are Hilltop House by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects and Dune House by Waechter Architecture.

Because Paul Masi, a partner at Bates Masi + Architects, has a strong affinity for the East End of Long Island, he wanted a second home for him and his family to be in the same general area as their year-round house in Amagansett, New York. So, he built a cottage on Block Island, an area that is arguably remote, since it is only accessible by passenger or car ferry.

The reason the Masis escape: to get away from the summer traffic of those searching for the high life in “the Hamptons.” Block Island instead offers tranquility and little traffic, just over 14 miles away. On its southern coast, the architect found a narrow two-acre parcel of land along the Mohegan Trail, which spills down the rugged bluffs to the beach. Masi eventually replaced a small house on the property with the larger 45-foot-square cottage. The zoning allowed construction of two stories—a main floor with a bedroom, plus a top story with three bedrooms—and a mostly below-grade level for a lounge and bunkroom. The hard part was actually constructing the house, since both materials and labor had to be transported by passenger ferry.

The main house and garage, clad in cedar shingles and vertical boards, are located off the Mohegan Trail. Photo © Bates Masi + Architects, click to enlarge.

Masi’s scheme for his 2,400-square-foot saltbox cottage also included a freestanding garage. Both structures have shed roofs carefully wrapped in cedar shingles, and vertical walls of tongue-and-groove boards. The house’s frame, built of two-by-fours, two-by-sixes, and two-by-eights, could be assembled by hand and meant that heavy components such as trusses or steel members would not needed. However, because of high winds, the architect butted the stud walls together, then through-bolted them with threaded steel rods anchored to concrete foundations to create four shear walls.

The living area and its deck face south to the bluffs and the Atlantic Ocean. Photo © Bates Masi + Architects

In addition to cedar shingles and boards, Masi relied on minimal eaves, and ran a flat copper trim around the base of the wall and the edges of the windows. The flinty patinated copper also wraps around the narrow chimney shaft outside, in addition to surfacing exterior walls tucked under the main deck’s overhang and the alcove of a bedroom porch nearby.

The dynamic linearity of the interior’s dimensional framing members is offset by screen walls of tongue-and-groove boards, all constructed with Douglas fir. In addition, clay found on the site was baked into unglazed tiles, in the dimensions of Roman brick, for the ground-level floor.

Inside the house, Douglas fir framing members create a strong linear pattern in the dining and living areas, offset by clay tiles for the floor (1 & 2). Photos © Bates Masi + Architects

The tour de force, however, is a sculptural spiral stair where oak disks form a column supporting open treads rotating around it. The stair, in turn, receives soft illumination through a rectilinear glazed notch carved into the roof.

An oak column and spiraling treads create a sculptural stair. Photo © Bates Masi + Architects

Copper appears as a lustrous, unpatinated interior finish for the headboards of two beds on the upper level. Photo © Bates Masi + Architects

In its entirety, Masi has created a natural yet sophisticated retreat from the increasingly popular tip of nearby Long Island. He and his family need not worry about traffic following them to this sanctuary, at least for now.

Image courtesy Bates Masi + Architects, click to enlarge.

Read about other projects in our “Shingled Out: Contemporary Cottages” series from the September 2025 issue.

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KEYWORDS: modern residential architecture Rhode Island

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Suzanne Stephens, a former deputy editor of Architectural Record, has been a writer, editor, and critic in the field of architecture for several decades. She has a Ph.D. in architectural history from Cornell University, and teaches a seminar in the history of architectural criticism in the architecture program of Barnard and Columbia colleges.