February, 19 2 3 
61 
A formal arbor set 
against the back¬ 
ground of a high 
garden wall. Rich¬ 
ard H. Pratt, land¬ 
scape architect 
( Center ) Showing 
how attractive the 
most simply designed 
and inexpensive rose- 
hung arbor can be 
realized 
A wide flung pergola, elab¬ 
orately designed, whose cen¬ 
tral section is covered with 
beams in hipped roof form 
fully proportioned, it acquires the 
right to change its name. The 
degree to which the pergola is 
made formally or ornamentally im¬ 
pressive should be determined by 
the character of the garden. The 
materials of which it is built, and 
the way these materials are 
handled, may be suggested by the 
architecture and construction of 
the house belonging to the garden. 
The pergola at the right is an ex¬ 
cellent example of design in com¬ 
plete harmony with the house; the 
building, seen beyond the fountain, 
being a brick, half-timbered struc¬ 
ture, and the pergola being built 
of the same materials similarly 
treated. 
There are four principal parts 
to every cross-beamed arbor and 
pergola: the supports, which may 
be posts or piers or columns; the 
lengthwise beams, which rest upon 
each line of supports; the cross¬ 
beams which, in turn, rest upon 
these long girders, and the strips 
which may be either heavy or light 
and which run lengthwise over the 
The use of squared and 
stained oak timbers is es¬ 
pecially appropriate to a 
garden in the English spirit 
cross-beams. In arbors where posts 
are used, such as that illustrated 
above, angle braces are generally 
necessary to provide additional 
strength, and when occasion de¬ 
mands they can be made a very 
decorative element in the design. 
Posts, of course, are always 
made of wood. In arbors like the 
one shown on the left hand side of 
the opposite page, done in ^ rusti 
manner, the posts, as well as the 
beams and braces, are small sizM 
timbers in the natural state, cue 
from cedar trees. This same kind 
of small timbers, by the way, is 
very often used on pergolas al¬ 
together different in character, such 
as that well known one at Amalfi, 
in Italy, where the stuccoed Tuscan 
columns are almost massive in 
scale compared with the slender 
cross pieces of cypress poles. 
(Continued on page 92) 
This pergola, with its brick 
piers and heavy oak cross 
beams, leads onto the court¬ 
yard of a half-timber house 
