Entrance to the Orm-Ropes'House, Salem, which was built 1720 
and lately restored admirably 
Cragie House, Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, has a stately 
old wooden fence and gateway 
Some Old Colonial Gateways 
A COLLECTION FROM WELL KNOWN MONUMENTS OF THE PAST, FULL OF 
HELPFUL SUGGESTION AS TO THE MEANS OF ENSURING HOME PRIVACY 
by Joy Wheeler Dow 
Photographs by the author 
I T has become fashionable once more to surround one’s 
dwelling place with some sort of fencing, and to have a gate¬ 
way. But that is not the true reason why gateways and fences 
have been recently growing into general favor. There are other 
underlying causes, of far greater influence than any transitory 
fashion. 
During the middle part of the last century a great deal of 
money was little better than wasted upon fences and gateways 
because the fences were not intended for protection half as much 
as they were for looks; and as for esthetic excellence, they had 
none at all. When, at last, their useless¬ 
ness was condemned on the two counts, 
long about 1880, the fences began to be 
pulled down, and in their place came 
unobstructed stretches of greensward 
that a newly invented toy — the lawn- 
mower — might have full play. The American people at 
that time had no shame about living in evidence, as one might 
call it; they cared little or nothing for privacy about their 
houses. 
A fence and gateway enclosing a humble and very limited 
cottage setting, with the aim merely of keeping people out, would 
seem as useless and unnecessary an expense as it did in 1880, 
only for a new condition—new to America — which has lately 
arisen, namely, a plea for a little home privacy. 
Whoever believes in the beautiful metaphor—I have 
forgotten with whom it originated 
or 1 should give the author due 
credit — that a man’s home is the 
sacred refuge of his life, has the key to the 
situation. It is not the despoiler of our 
shrubbery or our architecture who needs 
This gateway to an old Middletown, 
Conn., home is a restoration 
A modern Providence, R. I., gateway 
that has the old-time flavor 
The Lord house, Portsmouth, N. H., a type that 
could be inexpensively duplicated 
( 74 ) 
