Originally published January 2017
Red Slate Roof Tiles
When my husband and I bought the Lamson House, one of the things we discussed was whether its distinctive red roof was the original color of the roof when the house was built or whether one of its owners had at some point in time decided on making the bold choice to put a red roof on the house.
There was one thing we were certain of was that the asphalt roof that is there now was not the original material used to clad the roof. My husband thought that it was likely the red color was a choice made by a later owner because the house with all of its other fancy features would have almost certainly had a slate roof when it was originally built. I thought that the house had to have had a red roof to start with, but that the original material was likely terracotta or tin, both also popular though less expensive materials for roofs at that time, and a later owner switched to red asphalt in order to try to match the original color.
As it turns out, my husband and I were both wrong and right. A few months after we moved in, we found a small stack of red slate tucked away in a corner of the garage. The house did originally have a slate roof and it did also originally have a red roof.
It turns out that red slate roofs are very rare due to the fact that red slate itself is very hard to find and extremely expensive as a result. Within the slate roof industry, red slate is referred to as NY Red Slate because of the fact that the only commercial quarries to produce red slate are located around the Granville area of New York (and Vermont). It is also considered to be one of the most durable kinds of slate you can put on a roof. Red slate roofs can last for up to 200 years.
But, slate is slate and slate shingles do break occasionally. With the high cost of having to find red slate shingles and someone to repair them, it is likely that a previous owner decided to remove the original roof so that a more cost effective asphalt roof could be put on. But fortunately, they did decide to keep the distinctive red color so that visually the house remains very similar to what it looked like originally.