54 
House & Garden 
THE DOVE COTE’S PLACE IN THE GARDEN 
In England and On the Continent Jl e Find the Earliest Examples 
of This Architectural Pigeon Box 
COSTEN FITZ-GIBBON 
D OVE cotes or pigeon boxes, both in 
their way are distinctly useful. One 
can be beautiful and useful, and the other 
may be an eyesore. There is no intent in 
this place to present a treatise on “keeping 
pigeons for profit.” One cannot refrain, how¬ 
ever, from submitting the suggestion, espe¬ 
cially in these days when the feeling is so 
strong that everything must be turned to ac¬ 
count, that the keeping of birds is a domestic 
enterprise that may be well worth while from 
the purely material point of view and, at the 
same time, compatible with architectural in¬ 
terest and enhancement. 
In this respect, we may profitably take a 
leaf out of the experience of past generations 
and apply the lesson to very good purpose. 
On the first score, one need not do more than 
remind the reader that pigeons and squabs 
afford a delicious item of food supply and 
that their rearing does not involve an inordi¬ 
nate amount of trouble. On the second score, 
it is not amiss to point out that one probable 
reason that pigeon keeping is not more in 
vogue is the notion that their housing is wont 
to necessitate an unsightly structure on some 
part of the premises. 
It is exactly in this latter connection that 
attention is directed to the 
accompanying suggestive il- | 
lustrations, which should be | 
sufficient to dissipate that | 
fallacy. The dove cote as 
an architectural feature is 
usually the sign of an eco- | 
nomic system of many cen- | 
tunes’ growth, so that for | 
the best examples we natu- I 
rally turn to England and 1 
the Continent. The great 
Norman colombiers are al- | 
ready famous, so that we may 
focus our attention upon 
equally interesting struc- 1 
tures of England and Italy. I 
Pigeons and Crops 
The pigeon ever had the 1 
reputation of being a bird 
injurious to the farmer’s 
crops so that it was a recog- § 
nized necessity, in the days 
when intensive farming, 
prolific production, and sci¬ 
entific feeding were not un¬ 
derstood, that a limit should 
be placed upon its numbers. 
The building of a dove cote, 
therefore, was a privilege 
reserved to the lord of the 
manor, or for those to whom 
he might give a special per¬ 
mission, and the presence of 
a dove cote almost always indicated a resi¬ 
dence of manorial rank. Under present con¬ 
ditions of farming and feeding it is not diffi¬ 
cult so to regulate pigeon keeping that 
whatever depredations the birds commit will 
be outweighed by the advantage they bring. 
Early Types 
As the pigeon was an important food item, 
especially in winter when fresh meat was 
difficult to obtain, the dove cotes were de¬ 
signed to accommodate a large number of 
birds. One of those illustrated will house 
two thousand. The common shapes of dove 
cotes are square, oblong, round, hexagonal or 
octagonal and, as the illustrations show, they 
were built with an eye to architectural values. 
The doors were usually low so as not to 
interfere more than necessary with the 
nesting space. The walls outside were com¬ 
monly of unpierced masonry, save for one 
or two windows, while within w'ere many 
nesting holes. 
In some instances the nests were reached 
by a revolving ladder attached to two hori¬ 
zontal arms—set in different planes to give 
the ladder the requisite angle—and the arms 
turned upon a central up¬ 
right post. This contrivance 
could be swung to any posi¬ 
tion desired. In other cotes 
straight ladders, resting on 
the ground, were moved 
about as needed, or the nests 
might be inspected by 
climbing up the face of the 
wall, the holes themselves 
serving as hand and foot 
holds. The birds went in 
and out by way of the lan¬ 
tern at the top or, some¬ 
times, by way of windows 
when there was no lantern. 
So much for the mechanism 
of the structure. 
Now for the purely archi¬ 
tectural side of the matter. 
It is perfectly obvious how 
appropriately buildings of 
the type illustrated may be 
used, quite independently 
of their utilitarian function, 
either as garden adjuncts— 
in much the same way as 
gazebos—to give desired 
architectural balance and 
emphasis to a scheme or to 
In Italy one often finds 
the dove cote in the 
upper story of a pavilion 
wing, as in this example 
at the Villa Emo at Fan- 
zolo, near Treviso 
The Norman style of colombier has been repro¬ 
duced on the estate of Otto Kahn at Cold Spring 
Harbor, L. I. Delano & Aldrich were the archi¬ 
tects 
