Driveway

“ Running strings of incandescent bulbs draped up into festoons every so often by equidistant arc-lights follow the course of the well-oiled driveway, which in turn follows the course of the river as truly as a path made by a canal horse. A ledge of park, narrow as a terrace, slants to the water's edge, and of summer nights lovers drag their benches into the shadow of trees and turn their backs to the lampposts and to the world. ”

“ The only customers--or, rather, people--who unfailingly make Grant angry are those who use our driveway as a traffic circle. Several times a day a car from the east will swing into one of our driveways, making us think we have a prospect--only to swing out the other driveway and head back toward the east. Or a young fellow plummeting along the highway from the west will belatedly heed the words of Horace Greeley, and will splash gravel in all directions as he whirls into our driveway. ”

“ The colored bulbs swung moon-like from tree and shrub, painting their rainbow lusters on grass and driveway. Under the [Pg 310] high gray columns of the porch and into the wide door, framed in its small leaded panes that glowed with the merry light within, poured a stream of loveliness: in carriage-wraps of light tints, collared and edged with fur or eider, or wide-sleeved mandarin coats falling back from dazzling throats and arms, hair swathed with chiffon against the night dews, and gallantly cavaliered by masculine black and white. ”

“ The great house was largely dark and peaceful. Windows below glowed dimly through the dusk; and above, a single square shone brightly. Two men were coming slowly up the long driveway in front, which paralleled the road on which I stood; and as they approached the house, it seemed to me that they were walking not upon the gravel of the drive, but upon the grass beside it. When they reached the steps they turned aside, and skirting the house with a more evident avoidance of paths, crossed a stretch of lawn to what appeared to be a stable or garage some distance behind it. ”

“ Just think of a solid stone wall as high as a house and more than half as thick at its base! It narrows down to two or three feet in thickness at its top, like a pyramid of masonry, and above this will be a railing to prevent people from falling off, for there is to be a sidewalk along the outer edge of the driveway here. ”

“ We had not proceeded very far up the road when the car turned into a long winding driveway of gravel, bordered on either side by well kept lawns and trim trees. We could see that much through the windows of the car when the rain would cease its furious whirling against the glass for a moment. Soon we came to a stop under a wide sheltering porte-cochere, and the driver got down and opened the door ceremoniously. ”

“ The two walked together to the driveway, and shortly the mellow note of the great Panhard's horn sounded, as the automobile rounded the curve of The Bow and sped away to the north shore highway and the sheds. ”

“ Most places have too many, rather than too few, walks and drives. Small city areas rarely need a driveway entrance, not even to the back door. The back yard in Fig. 39 illustrates this point. The distance from the house to the street on the back is about ninety feet, yet there is no driveway in the place. The coal and provisions are carried in; and, although the deliverymen may complain at first, they very soon accept the inevitable. It is not worth the while to maintain a drive in such a place for the convenience of truckmen and grocers. ”

“ Considerable streams run along the sides of the main avenue, if not elsewhere, and boys with buckets on the end of long poles dip these into the water and throw it upon the driveway, a primitive but effective method. ”

“ All pretentious houses and hotels are built in quadrangles, with a carriage driveway entering a huge gate to the open court. At night this is closed by a pair of tall gates or doors twelve or fifteen feet high, like those in front of our fire companies, and a servant must lie there all night to answer a summons or to admit a belated lodger. Without changing the clothes he has worn all day, he lies on the soft side of a stone pavement night after night with his zerape or a piece of straw matting under him, and a stone for a pillow. ”

“ A shout from the driveway, or a bit of snow thrown against the window, drew her attention to a man standing below, holding up a note fastened to the end of a whip-handle. I do not know whether or not you have found that man. If you have—” The inspector made no sign. ”

“ The building of this great boulevard has already been going on for two years, and it will probably take fully two more to complete it. The steep banks sloped down to the very edge of the river, so it was necessary to build the road out in the water for most of its length, and the workmen had to make land to build it on. In one or two places great masses of rocks were in the way, and here they cut the driveway right through the solid rock. ”

“ Then he got out and looked up the pike and down the pike: it might have been an instinct to hail any one passing—he looked dazed—like a man not altogether under self-control. Not a soul was in sight.
[pg 187] He drove in.
The main driveway approached the house almost straight; but a few yards inside the gate there branched from it another which led toward the sequestered portions of the grounds. It was private and for pleasure: it formed a feature of the landscape gardening of earlier times when country places were surrounded by parklike lawns and forests and stone fences. ”

“ I face the door to the living room and the moment a car drives in its lights shine through our Venetian blinds and form stripes on the wall of the darkened living room. (Months of experience have taught me the difference in angle and appearance between the stripes cast by the headlights of cars going into Moe's and those driving into our driveway) . When a car drives in I tell Grant, who sits in the chair nearest the doorway, with his back toward the living room. ”

“ The drive should be sufficiently wide for carriages to pass through without besmearing your gate-posts with mud and dust. One should realize that the driveway is in reality a foot-path enlarged, and should always be kept immaculate. The gate, if you wish to prevent its sagging, should open in the center. A two-part gate gives often a better effect than one long one. Nothing equals iron, which can be treated in so many different ways that there is little danger of repetition in design. ”

“ He entered the gate and came up the driveway, with the determined air of a person who has a distasteful mission to perform, and means to perform it or perish miserably in the attempt. I felt a little bit sorry for him. ”

“ Market Street, as I said before, is the main thoroughfare of 'Frisco, and is a broad one. The sidewalks are wide enough for a dozen or more people to walk abreast along them and the driveway in the middle of the street contains two or three sets of street-car tracks, and sufficient room on either side for vehicles. ”

“ In laying out grounds for country homes or remodeling them, space should be of the first importance, and where space permits there is no better arrangement than a fine border on one side of the lawn with a driveway between the lawn and the border, leading from the street to the house and barns. ”

“ During the progress of the work the convenience of the public and of the residents along the street must be provided for as far as practicable. Convenient access to driveways, houses and buildings along the street must be maintained wherever possible. ”

“ For when you ascend gradually, past the Bon Marché, and come to the hill-top, you leave for awhile the shops and the continuous, conjoined houses, and arrive, past the transitional stage of semi-detachedness, at the wholly blest condition of splendid isolation in the rear of fences and carriage entrances, with gentility-balls on the gate-posts, a circular lawn in front of the house, skirted by its gravel drive, and perhaps even a stone dog on either side of the doorway! ”

“ This narrow band of grass followed the carriage-road up to the lodge-gate.
Around the paved yard in the rear stood the coach-house, stables, kitchen, laundry, scullery, larder, and other offices, and still farther to the rear of the house, behind the yard, were the flower and kitchen gardens. To the rear of all, surrounding all, and binding all in like suffocating bondage, was the Park of gnarled oaks and rank lush undergrowth and slimy soil. ”

“ Neither is it often necessary to have a drive in the front yard if the house is within seventy-five or one hundred feet of the street. When a drive is necessary, it should enter, if possible, at the side of the residence, and not make a circle in the front lawn. ”

“ The carriage drive comes down the middle of the garden and then swerves to its left, where it ends in a little gravelled circus opposite the Rectory porch. Beyond the gate is seen the dusty high road, parallel with the wall, bounded on the farther side by a strip of turf and an unfenced pine wood. On the lawn, between the house and the drive, is a clipped yew tree, with a garden bench in its shade. On the opposite side the garden is shut in by a box hedge; and there is a little sundial on the turf, with an iron chair near it. A little path leads through the box hedge, behind the sundial. ”

“ The coast-road which leads from Westport skirts along the edge of the bay, and is diversified by many a pretty cottage whose trellised walls and rose-covered porches vouch for the mildness of the climate, and are in summer resorted to as bathing-lodges by numbers from the inland counties. The high-road has, however, a grander destiny than to such humble, though picturesque, dwellings, for it suddenly ceases at the gate of an immense demesne, whose boundary wall may be seen stretching away for miles, and at last is traced high up the mountain side, where it forms the enclosure of a deer park. ”

“ It is true that the road is one much used by traffic, and by motorists in especial, whose dust and horrid odours might well disgust any but the hardiest of wraiths; but here is the old garden-pavilion or gazebo on the wall at the fork of roads, with its quaint roof and the windows from which the people of the manor would look out upon the traffic when it was not so dusty and did not stink so much, and here are still the trunks of the magnificent elms that until recently cast a grateful shade upon the road and made the bridge-end so beautiful a scene. ”

“ The walk curves away a few steps earlier to go to the front door but the drive, passing on, swings in under the rear corner windows and to the kitchen steps, veers around by the carriage-house door and so loops back into itself. In this loop, and all about the bases of the dwelling and carriage-house the flowers rise in dense abundance, related to one another with clever taste and with a happy care for a procession of bloom uninterrupted throughout the season. ”

“ We have a bumpy road in leaving the city, followed by a fine stretch of smooth, beautiful cement highway. On through rolling green country we drive, and into the suburb of Burlingame with its vine covered and rose embowered bungalows, and its houses of brown shingle and of stucco. The finer places sit far back from the road in aristocratic privacy, with big, grassy parks shaded by noble trees in front, and with the green foothills as a background. ”

“ A drive-way, or street, forty feet in width, reserved from the northerly side of the ground purchased by the Government, serves as an approach to that front, and secures the perfect isolation of the building, with perpetual access of light and air on that side, as well as on the other sides, whatever changes may hereafter be made in the adjoining ground. ”

“ Near the highest part of the ridge, on the easterly side of the road, stood an old, gambrel roofed, weather beaten house, its end facing the road and its front door at the side as though it, like its present owner, had turned sourly away from the world, refusing even to look out upon the highway which passed socially near it. ”

“ In the residential portion of the village or garden city, roads running due east and west should be avoided if possible. When this precaution has been taken, [65] much scheming to get the sun on the front as well as the back of the house will be spared. As is well known, a kitchen with a south aspect is unbearable in the heat of the summer. Where the road unavoidably runs east and west, the gardens of houses on the north side should occupy the front and not the back of the plot. ”

“ The highway itself roughly bisects the property—the best of whose grass and arable lands are contained in the southern division—and can be reached from the house, if one likes, through the long beech thicket by way of a narrow path, which, entering near the stables, runs as far as the containing hedge, in which, at some fifty yards from the main entrance, is a private wicket, leading down by a couple of steps to the road. ”

“ The house may be larger, or may be of stone, but there is no change in form or feature. The centre doorway has a room on either hand with windows, and a steep roof rises above the single story. The house, regardless of the front road, must face north or south. The long, narrow strips of farms, some only a few yards wide, and of enormous length, run mathematically north and south. It matters not that this highway, parallel with the river, runs northeast. ”

“ Once in the loft, I was going to take off as many tiles as I must to get through the roof into the garden, from there into the street, and out of the village in any direction. In the country it would most likely prove necessary to work round the village at a safe distance in order to strike a certain turnpike. Several miles along it a brook crossing the road was an indication that I should have to look out for a third-class cart track. ”

“ Preferably the traffic way from the rear entrance to the main portion of the house should not lead through the kitchen. If the kitchen must be used as a passageway, the doors should be so arranged that the traffic does not cross the work area. This not only decreases the possibility of interference with household activities but also makes possible a more compact and convenient arrangement of work equipment. An important factor is a workroom or porch, on about the same level as the kitchen, for laundry, canning, care of milk, and other farm activities and for supplementary food storage. ”