CUSTOM WOOD GARDEN GATES #3

This wood gate is Base Price + 15%
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Gate 3, shown with straight vertical stiles

San Anselmo, CA

Garden Gate #3 in Marin County, California.
Shingled side-walls, such as this, are a distinct architectural motif that suggests a more natural, or organic landscape. Hence, the gates are often left to weather into a silvery gray over a couple of seasons. This photo is one year after installation.

San Anselmo, CA

A better look at the house, which could easily be mistaken for what we might find on Martha’s Vineyard, which suddenly lifts to the surface the 4 days Charles spent on a rented bike in 2016 in the off season of October, peddling in a day-dreaming cloud up and down the endless and unassuming little gravel roads to come upon the classicism of those rambling dreamy retreats occupied for a few delicious weeks a year.

But back to San Anselmo, which is not Martha’s Vineyard and yet if you’re from the island, that island, as many of our patrons are, perhaps visiting San Anselmo is just as rewarding as Charles’ peddling forays.

Falls Church, Virginia

Garden Gate #3-2 as a double gate.

Falls Church, Virginia

Set to stone columns, with surfaced-mounted jambs.

Falls Church, Virginia

Falls Church, Virginia

The jambs surface-mounted onto flagstone. Columns with irregular stone require embedded jambs.
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Falls Church, Virginia

The architecture as a before photo, with the double gates planned for the right side of the house.
Although the planting has yet to mature, ultimately the stone terracing will provide a garden demarcation between patio and lawn.

Clyde Hill, WA

Custom wood garden gate #3-4 in Washington state, at only 48″ ht. Consequently, a foreshortened upper pattern.

Prowell’s original garden gate design #3, as #3-2, featured the tapered vertical stiles. The left and right side vertical frame boards, called stiles, taper from 5-1/4″ width at the top to approximately 8″ width at the bottom. A known Arts and Crafts motif that was created for those looking to match the same detail on their front entry door.

Altadena, CA

Garden Gate #3-2 near Pasadena, CA

Often, a home can be poised within several architectural motifs, with the definition of the entry gate and a few other telling details serving to tilt the balance. Although not a pure bungalow nor even an Arts & Crafts home, the combination of the gate’s upper grids and the tapered stiles convinces the approaching first-time visitor of what to expect within.

The tapered stiles is fairly rare. Although not something we would ever find on the Chicago style brick bungalows of the later 1930’s, it does surface on the more wood-oriented Arts & Crafts style homes of, say, Pasadena and Altadena, defined also by their deep eaves and low-pitched roof-lines championed by Henry and Charles Greene, two architects, and brothers, whose work at the turn of the 20th century culminated with the Gamble House, in Pasadena.

For architectural enthusiasts like Charles, there is a hierarchy of neighborhoods in America that offer the most rewarding hikes. Chicago’s Oak Park / River Forest for the Prairie House;
Santa Monica for the west coast interpretation of Art Deco;
Miami for more Art Deco;
Boston for the inimitable Salt Box;
San Francisco for the wood-framed Victorians;
Georgetown for the high-end Williamsburg-Colonial;
DC proper with the elegance of the columned Federalist portico;
Throughout Vermont the classic 4-square, two-story American farmhouse;
The charming quaintness of the weathered side-wall shingles and white trim of Cape Cod;
In NYC the endless surviving Art Nouveau apartment high rises;
Charleston and throughout the South for the antebellum shuttered mansions poised like maiden belles at a tea party.
And on and on. Such outings make for wonderful respites while lending some wistful purpose to the known benefits of a brief change of scenery in all of our lives. You return a little more efficient, a little more relaxed, and a few less cobwebs clogging the arteries.

We’ll include a photo of Greene and Green’s Gamble House (scroll down), in itself worth scheduling a vacation to Los Angeles.

Altadena, CA

The Prowell Jambs are cut at an angle (called a chamfer) at the top to fit snugly beneath the overhang cap, with the exposed portion–the chamfered portion–allowing the rain and moisture to gravitate down. The vast majority of those gates mounting to masonry columns or walls follow this procedure, with the top of the gate level with the lower line of the chamfer cut, which results in the top of the gate about 3/4″ below the bottom of the masonry cap.

Altadena, CA

Wood garden gate design #3-2 is in part the product of our patron, a California architect who borrowed and swapped from our existing styles to settle on something at once new and similar. The grid pattern is largely reminiscent of #68 and #67, and of course the tapered stiles. The end result is an interactive success.

Jay Nordsten, AIA
[email protected]

Altadena, CA

The Gamble House, in Pasadena, CA.

Open for tours daily.

Fremont, CA

Garden Gate design #3-3 getting along nicely with the flanking presence of a 3rd-party fence.

IN-PROGRESS

Charles slipping the lower floating panel into place.