Gothic Gates

Spider Gate to Hoveton Hall Gardens

There are few images as powerful and straightforward as a door.  Doors represent change and transition —when one steps across the threshold one has literally moved on from one place to another.  This apparently simple purpose of doors has a deeper metaphorical aspect as well: a pauper daily walks by the gates of the palace but they do not open for him; a baby is carried out of the hospital into the world; an inmate is dragged into a prison and is held there by the portcullis.  The most dramatic doors are huge operatic gates which represent significant transition.  These magnificent structures tend to be found outside palaces, parks, insane asylums, and cemeteries, but sometimes they seem to have no purpose at all…

An ornate gate outside St. Petersburg, Russia

As we approach Halloween—the one night of the year when the doors between this world and the next are thrown open (well, according to myth anyway), it is appropriate to celebrate the  foreboding gates in our world. Below is a gallery of magnificent gates–not all are truly gothic (a few images of non-gothic gates were too good to pass up) but they are all affecting and impressive.

University of Chicago: Cobb Gate

Town Gate at Suakin (Anthony Ham)

Gatehouse at Ballysaggartmore

Gate to Chirk Castle, Wales

Crown Hill Cemetery Gate

Forest Hill Cemetery, Boston

Unknown Gate

Private Modern Gate

Gothic gate in old park in Taitsy

Gate Lodge to Annesgrove Gardens

Gate to Fort Canning Green, Singapore

Gate to Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn

Gate to Hood Cemetery, Philadelphia

Neubrandenburg Town Gate

A rich person’s iron gate

Mount Royal Cemetery , Montreal

Unknown Abandoned Gate

Gate at Oxford University

Gate to Walled City of Rothenburg

Stephen King standing at the gate of his house in Bangor Maine

Traverse City Insane Asylum, Michigan