A Tree Grows At MCS: Shingle Art Replaces Iconic Depot Road Tree

CHATHAM – When it came time to design a new addition to the Monomoy Community Services building on Depot Road, one problem cropped up almost immediately. In order for the new wing to fit on the east side of the building, a large, old maple tree had to be removed.

 MCS Director Theresa Malone described the tree as “stunning,” as much a part of the MCS campus as the picnic tables and nearby playground.

 “Every kid that’s ever been to Monomoy has sat under that tree,” she said. “It’s difficult to convey how much a part of Monomoy it was.”

 Staff member Michele Green suggested that a way to keep the tree’s memory alive was to incorporate it into the shingles on one side of the new addition. That sounded like a great idea, so Malone started looking around for shingle artists. She found Carol Hutchings “literally down the street,” Malone said. “It just seemed like it was supposed to be.”

 When she talked with Hutchings, “she got it right away,” Malone said.

 Late last week the project’s builder completed shingling the east side of the new addition, which incorporates the 20-by-20-foot shingle tree design created by Huntchings.

 It’s the largest piece Hutchings has done and took four months to design and assemble.

 “It was a challenge,” she said.

 After meeting with Malone and finalizing a design, Hutchings assembled a replica of the design in her basement, using strapping to represent the shape of the wall and the location of windows. She cut the shingles with a bandsaw and numbered each so it could be broken down and brought to the site.

 The silhouette of the tree was created with red cedar shingles so it would stand out from the standard white cedar shingles typically used for siding. “They will fade differently, so they will always have the tree present,” Hutchings said. She likened the project to a “three-dimensional puzzle.”

 “It can be a challenge because you have to work with the weather, you have to also make sure your seams between each shingle aren’t on top of each other, they’re a certain distance away from each other,” she said. “You have to figure out where the red starts and stops, who has to be laid over who, so that the rain falls correctly and it is still doing its job as shingles.”

 Hutchings and her husband Keith are builders, and she did her first shingle art piece when a client wanted a more “Cape Cod” design. A shingle art addition seemed like a solution, and she thought it was something she could do.

 “I did it in my basement on plywood, the customer came over and looked at it, said yes I like it, and we put it up,” she recalled. “It just went from there.”

 That first piece was an eight-foot striped bass. Hutchings other shingle art pieces have included schools of fish, starfish, and the Highland Lighthouse in Truro (a four-foot version). 

 Installation of the MCS tree went off with few problems. “On occasion they had to make adjustments,” she noted, but the entire process, which took about a week, went pretty smoothly.

 Once the fencing around the site is removed, the shingle tree will be readily visible on the side of the new building. 

 “To me that tree is so Monomoy, because it’s rooted in the community, and it branches out to so many different people in so many different ways,” said Malone. “The result is just absolutely stunning.”

 During construction, MCS has been running its programs out of Chatham Elementary School across the street, while its offices are quartered at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church. The project — which will renovate program space and provide new space for the Chatham Children’s Fund — is slightly behind schedule, Malone said, but should be completed in the fall.