You probably don't really need it. The only advantage is not having water running off the roof onto your entrance way, but that's a small roof so in light rain it won't be a torrent and in a gullywasher you'll be wet in any event.

There are other treatments, but keeping the water away from the side of the house(and foundation) is important.

See the link below for ideas.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rain chains

The downspout should come down on the opposite end, along the house and terminate in a PVC drain that goes under the walk and comes up in the lawn. Unfortunately, the gutter routing should have been thought through when the project was designed. Attaching them to the column, is bad enough; facing the approach to the entrance makes it even worse.

EDIT - on second thought, better to always get the water away from the house as far as possible; pitching the gutter towards the house not a good idea.

The picture below with the gutter attached to the column on the right doesn't look so bad (still wouldn't like it, though). Right by the front door seems to stick out more, plus the color difference. Maybe scan pictures on Houzz to see what other people have done?

This post was edited by DreamingoftheUP on Thu, May 1, 14 at 8:59

Here's an example closer to your setup, with the downspout coursing near a porch column.

Painting the downspout the same color as what it is in front of will help disguise it - off-white to match the column and then a gray tone to match the stones.

Thanks for the advice. The builder thought that we could take off the downspout and put a small elbow piece on the gutter to shoot the water away from the house. Hopefully that looks better and does the job. It's only a small roof area that won't collect much snow/rain.
My next option is a rain chain. Thanks for that suggestion, handymac.

Here's the new gutter

That certainly looks much better, but what will you be doing in the area below where the plywood is? You don't want splash-up on to the stone.

Yeah, the comments that didn't see it as a problem were odd to me. It's one thing to have a downspout along the corner of a porch, but this is such a prominent place along the front walk. I would have had the "what were you thinking?" talk with the builder, too. Looks better now, and if runoff is a problem, a rain chain would be much less intrusive.

I plan on planting some shrubs and mulching the area, hoping that will prevent splashing back onto the stone.

IMO, the 'what were they thinking' applies to what you now have. Your builder should know better than to offer that as a solution since water 'shooting off' is going to create more of a headache than the downspout you had.
Landscaping and painting the lower portion of the downspout is the better solution......or a rain chain that empties into an area of gravel. Personally, I'd have a drain buried so that the runoff is carried out into the lawn and away from the house.

This post was edited by annz on Sun, May 4, 14 at 1:24

Shooting the water off works fine on our porch, as the runoff streams directly onto mature and perpetually thirsty evergreens.

The second floor drop is the more problematic one. There's too much roof to drain from just that one downspout and the concentrated flow on the shingles will wear them out prematurely and likely create an ugly discolouration.

There was clearly inadequate thought given to the trough and downspout system. Not surprising. I've seen 60 foot lengths of eavestrough "professionally" installed absolutely level. Real useful.

Shooting the water off works fine on our porch, as the runoff streams directly onto mature and perpetually thirsty evergreens.

The second floor drop is the more problematic one. There's too much roof to drain from just that one downspout and the concentrated flow on the shingles will wear them out prematurely and likely create an ugly discolouration.

There was clearly inadequate thought given to the trough and downspout system. Not surprising. I've seen 60 foot lengths of eavestrough "professionally" installed absolutely level. Real useful.

What Worthy says about the second floor spout is really a concern. That is a lot of roof to be handled by that one small spout. It looks like it will overflow onto your foundation with heavy rain events and if the gutters aren't spotlessly cleaned it will overflow onto the foundation with light to moderate rain events. I know, we have a terrible time keeping our gutters free from litter. In our old house, if we can't keep the rain from the foundation, our basement gets wet. Not a good thing to get the soils wet at the foundation even if it doesn't seep in. The soils will move with shrink swell action and be hard on the concrete.

Paint is a wonderful thing. We had a similar situation but had to get the water away from the house. (We live in the south and I don't want to do anything that will possibly attract termites.) So I painted the downspout the same color as the pillar. No one ever even noticed it after that.

Where it joined the bricked area along the foundation, I painted that section of downspout a brown color so it would "fade" into the brick. Now one noticed it after that.

Then I joined a round pvc pipe to the where the water came out because I wanted that water far away from the foundation. Spray painted the pvc pipe brown also and it ended up being covered by pine straw that is in the garden area.

Water shoots out onto the driveway and gets carried away. End of problem and the gutters do their job nicely.

I know that this conversation is old, but I am running into the same problem now and wondering about "embedding" the spout within the pillar. That is, build the pillar enclosing the spout, with spout opening out at the bottom. I have made an attempt to depict it, although not very well :-) Feedback is welcome.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/193936327687231189/

I just saved this link about the gutter draining through the post.