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A Sense of Arrival: The Gates, The Name, and The Drive
While the builders do their thing with the porches, blogger Carey Maloney turns his attention to other pressing matters. For those who are tuning in late, interior designer Maloney and his partner, architect Hermes Mallea, of the M (Group), own a ranch house on a piece of riverfront property that years ago belonged to The House whose renovation is the subject of this blog. Their place shares a common driveway with The House.
As I mentioned early on, The Driveway is pretty cool—long and well-paved, passing through open fields, woods, orchards, more woods, until you arrive at The House. HM and I first experienced The Driveway on our bikes. We’d rented a house up the road for a few summers and cycled past frequently—more often than not rolling our eyes at the imposing stone piers with big iron scroll-y gates and two bronze name plaques inset. The bronze plaques were the kicker—very “Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very Very Nervous.” Trop parvenu (oh, how I wish I were parvenu; I’d be so good at it.)
When a local real estate guy sent us to see what would become our house, we actually got to enter this Narnia.
So this episode will get us through the gates, past the name, and onto the drive.
The Gates
We’ve done gates for clients in high traffic areas like Greenwich (brick columns) or Holmby Hills (split rail electronic gate and a dirt driveway right off Sunset Boulevard—sort of Anti-Kidnap Chic). They can serve a purpose—privacy and (minimal) security. But in Columbia County? Very Non-U.
On our road: Wood drive gate flanked by pedestrian gates; personal favorite. Stone piers with simple wood gate—what’s not to love? The House’s Gate: See what I mean?
No one on our road has anything vaguely like these 1960s suckers (above right)—thank god; they’re overkill. They have that lonely, “Southfork” feel—big “security” gates that really don’t keep anyone out. (You simply walk around them to enter, rob, and pillage.)
Tall stone piers and walls support 10’-tall iron gates, with the original electronic openers (enormous by current standards). The stone is highly mica’d. It glitters (nothing wrong with glitter—in its place—but it’s place is not Columbia County). To top it off, the stone is veneer: thin cleaved bits (2” - 3” thick) mounted to the substructure. We always want real stone—chunks of stone—never veneer. But we got veneer.
In its heyday (1965), there was a guard posted out there at the gate—how lonely was that job? Even today, there are electrical and telephone lines from the house to the gate (maybe a mile of wiring)—very 007.
Over the years, neither The Clients nor We have paid them much attention—for us, they’ve merged into the landscape. But we all know First Impression’s are KEY, so now we need to address them, if only to clean up the mess and get rid of the few ‘60’s plants that have survived (against all odds), and the 20th-century weeds that have grown trunks.
Not that I haven’t had ideas—stucco the stone (wrong), stain it dark to lessen the glare (has potential), slap a coat of Rustoleum on the gates before they fall off, eliminate the bronze cemetery plaques or patinate them so dark, you can’t read them. But I don’t own them, so I’ve held back. Now that I have been officially hired and can weigh in—not as a Neighbor but as a Design Professional, I’m very proud.
Signage and The Name
You can name your house Maggie, as far as I’m concerned, but that doesn’t make it Clarence House or Mandalay. (I guess it makes it Maggie.) House names are dicey…a tiny misstep and you’ve got an Upson-Downs level of pretension going on. HM and I have come up with some doozies for our place—usually in response to hearing someone refer to their unremarkable prefab as Halcyon Manor. A favorite is “Maison de Mille Bienvenues,” a petit chateau in the piney woods (read: gene ditch) of East Texas. FYI, our house was listed as “The Casino” on the electric panel box. I love that name, but the mobster was thinking Vegas not Veneto. We’ll stick with the street number as our “name,” a habit after years in NYC using addresses to refer to projects (“820,” “720,” “770,” “834,” etc. And if you have to ask…)
Northwood, pretty near perfect; Mountain View: I’m speechless; Charming use of brick and stone—very Arts-and-Craftsy. However, the stainless numbers add an unwelcome jolt of modernity (I would have played down the numbers for reasons obvious to most of us… Some puerile sense of humor at play?)
The House (which, for security purposes, shall remain nameless here) has a name, a keeper from the 1860’s. But discretion is key: Presently, the House’s name is mounted à la Woodlawn Cemetery on both piers—one wasn’t enough? (To order bronze plaques for your front gate Google: Grave Marker.) So I would keep the name—but perhaps display it on a slightly more ‘tasteful’ (horrible word) sign? I say, go for the homemmake look. Grab some kids, some paint, a board, a gin and tonic and/or a doobie and make a sign.
The Driveway
When we moved to our house, upon being introduced to one of our grand new neighbors, she suggested that we replace the blacktop driveway with gravel. “Blacktop is so commercial.” (Read: déclassé.) Well, let me tell you something: After one winter and one spring—plows slicing above it, water running off it—you’d be a dope to remove the blacktop. And a quick calculation of the removal cost exceeded seven figure, which would elevate you from mere Dope to Complete Lunatic (albeit Rich). So the blacktop stays.
True, we may not like the look (FYI, it starts out shiny black, but it grays down quickly), but we like the functionality. Moreover, I maintain that The Driveway needs to be maintained—if only weeded to keep the seams from bursting (without intervention, plants will demo the thing in a few short years). One suggestion was ‘ignore the potholes”—but to me, this is like a woman with bad legs who stops shaving them (where did that analogy come from? I like it. The mind [mine] is a strange thing). You gotta maintain stuff—even stuff you don’t like. There is a fine line between Old Money shabby and Trashy. Me? I aim for the Southern House Proud look. “Neat but not Gaudy,” as we say in Texas.
The drive meanders through open fields and around Hermes’ dreaded “dead man’s curve.”
The layout of the drive is great—long straight-aways (super for acceleration) and charming curved bits. HM finds the curves less charming than I do; but then, his side of the car (read: the passenger seat) was on the tree side when I mis-estimated one snowy winter night. There’s even a Granary in the distance, painted barn red with white trim. Our little Rural Folly.
Next time we’ll talk re: KVV’s landscape plans—including The Gates—and delve into stone, gravel, and brick.
Books
The Landscape Master, for us, was Russell Page. What magnificent gardens this man created. His first commission was Longleat in the 1930’s (‘nuff said) and later commissions include the gardens at the Frick and PepsiCo’s Purchase, New York sculpture garden in the 1980’s. Do yourself a favor and check out The Gardens of Russell Page by Marina Schinz. The chapter on “Trees and Water” is brilliant (the entire book is brilliant).
And of course, Sunset has books on Gates. Our library’s entry is from 1975 How to Build Gates and Fences. There is always info to be gleaned from the editors at Sunset.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/23/08 at 11:51 AM • Permalink
