Vermont’s Capital city has a well-loved, 200 acre park adjacent to the statehouse. Hubbard Park‘s last set of park gates was installed over twenty years ago, and the time came when they didn’t swing like they used to. TimberHomes just completed installing some spiffy new shop built gates, with the help of the park staff, and swinging has begun anew.
These new park gates are a mortise and tenon adaptation of the previous gates. Care was taken to avoid punching any holes in the fir pieces that would not drain, so mortise and tenon joinery was used only at the top of the small uprights in the gate. They’re housed and fastened from the underside with structural screws. Custom steel straps were fabricated by steel workers at Montpelier’s Construct, and connect the horizontal members to the fir post. The whole assembly hangs on locally harvested and sawn locust posts, which are direct buried into the ground. Locust was chosen as a wood species for it’s strength in rot resistance.
Park gates fit well with our style of building. Get in touch to have your own!
New park gates welcome walkers, bikers and dogs to Hubbard Park
Steel straps connect fir gates members
Gates are hung on locust posts
Gates are at the main entrance to the park, and another identical set can be found at a secondary entrance at the top of Hubbard Park drive.
What’s left of the old park gates peeks out from behind the new ones
