When Og first draped a mastodon hide across the mouth of his cave to keep the rain out, his neighbours took note. Not one, however, commented on the curb appeal of his innovation.
For most of the 200 millennia that Homo sapiens have been closing hinged barriers across main entranceways, doors served an almost exclusively defensive purpose. They kept out the elements, aggressive sabretooth tigers, marauding Visigoths and nosy neighbours. Residential doors didn't need to be comely, only stout and sturdy.
A grand door should fit well into its surroundings, but also be a piece of art unto itself.
Even when simple plank doors gave way to more elaborate-looking frame-and-panel doors sometime around the early 18th century, style was secondary. The wooden panels floating within a frame made the doors less likely to warp, while reducing drafts.
It was probably inevitable, however, that homeowners would start to fret about front-door esthetics. The front door is unique among architectural features in that it is it a keystone in both exterior and interior design. Architects, interior designers and landscapers all have an opinion on the front door.
Ottawa architect Andr © Godin calls the front door a home's signature piece.
"The door is very important because it sets a precedent for the rest of the house," he says. "It's a focal point for the overall design. You want to make an impression of what to expect on the inside of the house."
Melanie Lapens ©e, who added a custom-designed, russet-stained white oak door to the front of her Ottawa home last year, expresses the same sentiment. "Your front door is the heart of your home."
Her new front door welcomes guests, she says, and is a family touchstone.
"We spend a lot of time near that front door, either in the front yard where we often glance at the door, or indoors, where the door leads to a large open foyer. We look at the door all the time."
This sense of the front door as something other than merely functional is relatively new. Perhaps the oldest front door in the nation's capital is the double set hung on the west face of the home built by pioneer Braddish Billings in the early 1830s, when rough log shanties outnumbered permanent dwellings.
Preserved as the Billings Estate Museum, the handsome Alta Vista home is the oldest frame dwelling in the city and the front doors are original, says museum administrator Laura Peters.
The two oak doors made from wood milled on the property are hung one behind the other, one facing inside and the other out. Painted white as in early photographs, they are plain and functional, designed to keep the winter chill at bay.
As civilization encroached upon the frontier, however, it became increasingly important for Ottawa's front doors to make a statement.
Politicians and lumber barons couldn't build mansions and then face them with plain, painted slabs. Instead, front doors were stained and varnished, carved and embellished, and softened with glass.
The double front doors of Heritage Canada Foundation were part of the original home built for lumber wholesaler William H.A. Fraser, in 1905. The warmly stained solid oak doors are inset with leaded prism-glass windows, and trimmed with spool-and-bead moulding. They suggest prosperity without ostentation.
Ottawa, of course, is also home to what might be called "Canada's front doors," though few Canadians, including the politicians and dignitaries who pass through them daily, would be familiar with them. The big panelled doors tucked beneath the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill are open and out of sight during Parliament's working day, exposing functional bronze and glass doors.
Installed in 1922, five years before the Peace Tower itself was finished, the doors are made of teak, the wood used for building ships. It is one of many nautical references architect John Pearson included in his "ship of state," says House of Commons curator David Monaghan.
While mass-market home construction moved towards economical steel-clad frame doors in the last half of the 20th century, solid wood doors, with or without glass, are still the preferred way to make a statement in custom construction or renovation, says Godin.
"Nine times out of 10, I recommend wood for the feel of it, the warmth of it," says the award-winning architect. "The depth of detailing that we can achieve with a wood door is a lot better than anything else we can find on the market."
-- Canwest News Service
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