George Wymberley Jones De Renne returned from Europe in 1891 to revive the family’s ancestral estate, and planted the signature 1.5-mile-long allée of more than 400 live oaks that same year. He took permanent possession of Wormsloe in 1893, and commissioned the arched entrance gate shortly before he died in 1916. The gatehouse was erected a year later. By 1998, when Sterling Builders and Restoration restored the building, termites had consumed half of its structural timbers, but left untouched its old-growth cypress cladding. The grounds opened to the public in the 1920s.