When you live in a coastal town, you realize that in those summer months, it can get really hot, even more so inside the buildings covered by those dark colors. As we all know, the darker the color, the more heat that color absorbs making the inside a sweltering hotbox. Why not just throw the air conditioning on you may ask? There are two reasons why this would be an issue. First, it can be very costly to constantly run the air conditioning all the time. Secondly, when a lot of these little towns were founded, air conditioning had not been invented yet. Residents found a way to naturally cool their buildings down by paining them bright colors to reflect the sunlight and heat off. This is the reason that some coastal towns are painted white. It was also considered cleaner and newer looking for a building to be painted white.

Not all coastal towns went with white though. Another common denominator in a coastal town is that there are a lot of boats. Some places found it cost efficient to use the paint left over from their boats to paint their houses as well. Since boats tend to be painted bright colors, such as red, so were the houses.

In some coastal towns, they used color to organize and identify their buildings. Fishing stands were blue, police stations were black, hospitals were yellow, stores were red etc. In some parts of the world, buildings wouldn't have street numbers so the color organization helped people to locate what they were looking for.

There actually is a functionality purpose to the brightly colored house as well. Again, all of these houses line the coastline. In any coastal community, you have a lot of fishermen. Passing ships and boats would use the brightly colored homes to help navigate where they were.

The reason I heard years ago was that as fishermen of the town were out to sea working for long periods of time, they could spot their home by the color it was painted. This would serve as a reminder of their loved ones and give them a nice comforting feeling.

A lot of these original reasons are outdated and have been advanced through modern technology. However, for all these reasons, brightly painting your town has become a tradition and one that continues to this day. A lot of these small towns have become known for their bright colors. They feed into it and it has become a source of income from the tourism trade.

In the U. S. we have a number of cities that are known for their bright colors. New Orleans and Miami to the South. San Francisco on the West coast. Here on the East coast, we have Cape May, NJ. At the very southern tip of the state, Cape May is recognized as the oldest seaside resort in America. Although folks from Philadelphia began vacationing here in colonial times, it wasn't until the construction of the iconic hotel, Congress Hall, in1816 that it gained popularity.

Becoming one of the finest resorts in America, many U.S. Presidents vacationed in Cape May. Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln and his wife had spent time here. Other presidents that enjoyed Cape May were Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, and Chester Arthur. On an invitation to Cape May by Philadelphia businessman John Wanamaker, President Benjamin Harrison enjoyed the city so much that he made it his Summer White House.

Cape May's historic district is filled with 600 buildings in various styles such as Eclectic, Queen Anne, Italianate, Gothic Revival, Colonial, French Second Empire and Late Victorian. Gurney Street is home to a row of brightly painted Victorian homes known as The Painted Ladies. I could sit here for hours imagining the people that first owned these homes and what kind of lives they led.