Pergolas in Westwood, OH

Westwood (ZIP 45211) is streets of substantial brick and frame houses built between the 1890s and the 1920s. They went up at a scale nothing modern matches. A pergola behind one of them has to hold its own against it. So we take the size of the timber off the house.

On a house this big the back yard can feel like leftover ground. A pergola gives it a center. The posts set out a room and the top brings the sky down to a height a person can read. The shade lands on the table through the afternoon. It is the one structure that makes a large old lot feel occupied.

What decides whether it holds its own is the thickness of the timber, and it is nearly always undersized. The house beside it carries a twelve-inch cornice, the deep board under the roof edge, tall windows with real trim, and brickwork three stories high. A four by four post and a two-inch beam in front of that reads as temporary, because everything near it is heavier.

So the sizes come up. Six by six posts to start and often eight by eight. Beams doubled, or one deeper piece. Rafters with enough depth to throw a shadow with some weight in it. None of that is needed to carry the load. All of it is the difference between belonging to the house and being delivered to it. The detail follows the same logic. A rafter end cut square reads modern and a shaped one reads period. A chamfer along a post edge softens it and a bracket at the beam finishes it. All of that is cheap while the timber is on the saw, which is when we cut it.