The Charm of Doors

Accent doors that pop against shingling, an image taken in my favorite place.

Perhaps the cover art for The Secret Garden, a book my third-grade class read as a unit, caused me to love charming, unusual doors. Maybe the excitement in the story of opening a wardrobe door in an attic, only to push through fur coats to enter Narnia reinforced that love of doorways.

Or, could it be that the image of a door as portal to a different world remains imprinted in our collective unconscious? A remnant of a timeless, indelible memory?

A door at Hammond Castle, located on Cape Ann.

All these things likely contributed to my appreciation of unique & charming doors. I also think of Gandalf’s opening the Doors of Durin at the Mines of Moria, speaking Elvish so that runes in the moonlight would unlock secrets. In that case, the literally charmed door.

I even loved doors as a child at the homes we had. One in a turret of a Round House, the other a turquoise front door of a New Englander painted white with black shutters.

So, when traveling, I like to look for unusual & striking doors to photograph.

A rustic Italian door, image taken during a trip to Cinque Terre.

My photograph collections from trips often if not always include door or doorway photos. I think there’s personality & character in the choices people make for entrances to their homes or by the varied architects who constructed the many buildings, churches, schools, & other public spaces.

El Trono, the throne at Ek Balaam in Mexico.

If you think about doors, whether closed or open, ajar or illuminated, wrought-iron-gated or wood-carved, there can be a deep sense of mystery & a kind of magic to them. Symbolism of a sort. They can welcome or try to scare visitors away.

A gorgeous gas-lit entrance with beautiful wooden door at a Georgetown residence.

Certainly, this, my fascination with this subject, might just be my quirk, but I like to imagine people behind those entrance choices & give them stories, just as writers of literary doors from books I’ve loved once had. You can create a whole story from a door or doorway, thinking about who lives inside the places that lie beyond the threshold. What dreams may come?

A family home’s front door situated towards Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.

In a more mundane sense, the style, features, decoration, & function all matter for doors of modern residences. And I must confess that I have long loved the show “Curb Appeal” on HGTV, as I enjoyed seeing the dramatic transformations of entrances of homes & front yards. Many told a type of story inspired by the owners.

As a child, I fancied this tiny hidden door which created a passageway between two closets, both located under the front staircase of our family home. It felt like my secret, & you had to be fairly little to comfortably pass through it. Like Harry Potter, I kept that space cozy, so it was a delight to read how Harry’s room at the Dursley’s sat under the staircase just like my closet passageway had.

A garden doorway at Lamb House, in Rye, England.

As introvert thinker, I like the quiet moments in gazing at doors, wondering away, lost in imagination. There’s creative energy to be found there in those solitary recharging moments. Dreamy.

As a writer, have you ever been inspired to compose a story inspired by a particular door you’ve seen? Do you give thought to doors you describe in your fiction? Are there others like me?

29 thoughts on “The Charm of Doors”

  1. Can I tell you how beautiful this post is? I have always observed doors – portals to something new, great metaphors and so many architectured exquisitely (as shown in this post)
    Im amazed there is a post about doors and feel lucky to come across it..

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  2. I, too, love doors. Just something about the mystery and wood. You think of all the history that has passed through in generations. It is such a delight to find an old door. I love to hear stories if how the door belonged to an older home years ago. It brings the house character. And I truly believe it can set up the interior space if planned out well. Thank you for sharing the lovely pictures. You bring back memories of childhood wonder and old brass keys in a drawer in the old china cabinet. Beautiful!

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      1. Thank you Sharon. I used to think I was the only one who loved old doors. So great of you. I will read more here. Thank you so much.

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  3. I like this post. I too appreciate doors and doorways. I’ve made several posts on my blogs of doors in different parts of the world. Once when I was giving a talk in the Kuwait University of Petroleum, I was delighted to see a poster of interesting doors of Kuwait.

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  4. Awesome post! Throughout Greek and Roman history doorways had significance as well. Doorways were considered to be portals to different realms, mostly between our world and the paranormal. There were gods of doorways because they were considered to be magical. I grew up wishing those magical realms existed 😊

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  5. Great images! I loved all of them!
    Thank you for following my blog. I hope you will like my posts if you read them!
    Why have you stopped sending posts after june 2018?

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  6. I also love doors. All kinds of doors. I’m always photographing doors in my travels. I try to make a game of it, guessing what the lives are like of the people who live behind the doors.

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  7. It isn’t just the images of doors that is so appealing in this post. It’s the possibility of mystery, fear, welcoming, happiness, old, known, potential, hope, and other things that the door leads to that I find so intriguing.

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  11. Really enjoyed this post and the wide variety door images; just had to post it to my twitter feed! And coincidentally, at writer’s group today, we were talking about unusual gods and I mentioned the god of doors: Porticulus. Portal, of course, from the Latin for door.

    Now you have got me thinking writing a short story about doors.

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  12. Opening a door to an imaginative world is always my fascination where answers lie to questions for which we scratch our heads on. Hope it comes true someday! Till then, stargazing always works. Look forward to your next post 🙂

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  19. Sharon, I love these, especially the ones beneath the curved archways. The double teal doors, in particular caught my eye. Do you follow Janis’s blog “Retirementally Challenged,” as she likes doors as well when she travels. Keith

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