If you’ve ever driven through Levittown, Long Island, you’ve seen the paradigm of post-World War II housing. Designed for the young parents who were giving birth to the baby boomer generation, the Levittown homes were built according to the principles of manufactured military-built housing, but incorporated the “must haves” of post-war life: large patios. , modern appliances, television antenna and other amenities. Promotional photos of Levittown over a period of years show that the garage’s evolution followed major trends in the changing American lifestyle.
Early house plans from the 1940s show boxy Cape Cod-style homes with a living room, dining room, bathroom, and two bedrooms. There were no access roads: the only car owned by most families was parked on the street. By 1950, the company’s brochure offered five houses in a modified Cape Cod/Ranch style, each with a driveway leading to a single attached carport. And in the sister suburb of Levittown, Pennsylvania, in 1954, developers introduced a variety of homes that incorporated the ultimate in home design: a closed garage.
Today, if you drive through even the most subdued suburban neighborhood, you’re likely to see a huge two- or three-car garage that opens directly onto the street, with homes spilling out behind and above. The garage has become the facade of the modern American home.
The growth in importance of the garage has coincided with the presence of more and more cars in the typical American family. When Henry Ford lowered the price of his Model T so “the workers who build them can buy them,” the option of owning a car became a reality for families of limited means, and during the 1910s to 1930s car ownership became a reality. of automobiles grew steadily.
Car sales fell as World War II limited both income and the availability of raw materials, but millions more women learned to drive while holding positions previously held by the military. By the time the subdivision building boom began shortly after the war, just about any young couple could afford an $8,000 house and an $800 truck. Usually, after taking her husband to the commuter train station, the housewife used the car to shop and run errands. (African-American and other minority families, including Jews in many suburbs, were excluded from housing opportunities by restrictive covenants in the North and Jim Crow laws in the South. But that’s another story.)
Soon, however, one car just wasn’t enough: Dad wanted the family car, and Mom needed her own. In the 1960s, it was not uncommon for a teenager to get a vehicle, often a grandparent’s old car, for their 16th birthday. Instead of parking on the street or under a single carport, a family now needed the minus a double garage plus room to park a third or even fourth vehicle. Today, in addition to a two-car garage (or, more likely, one car plus attic clutter), many suburban and country homes include an additional oversized garage for the RV.
Garage doors have also changed. The early ones from the late 19th century were simply barn doors that allowed a farmer to bring a horse-drawn carriage into the garage for loading and unloading or storage out of the weather. They were hinged outward or rolled sideways on steel rails like a sliding closet door and were used for mechanized vehicles (tractors, cars, and trucks) as they became more widespread. Coachhouses, originally built by the wealthy for horses and carriages, also began to house automobiles.
In the early 1920s, as more and more middle-class families could afford the Model T, a modified version of the garage appeared. Typically a small shed (often only eight or ten feet wide), the garage was not wide enough for a sliding door. A single hinged door would be too heavy and ungainly to move, so a split-hinged door, each half a meter or four feet wide and seven or eight feet high, was used instead. These old wooden doors can still be seen in rural areas; they often look homemade, with small crystals and one-by-six-inch diagonal crossover straps in the front. But its weight put a lot of pressure on the hinges, screws, and frame, and when there was snow on the ground, it had to be shoveled away before the doors could open.
The invention of the hinged (folding) door was the first real innovation in garage doors. A door divided into vertical sections with hinges could slide or back into the garage itself. In 1921, Mr. CG Johnson designed a swinging garage door with a horizontal hinge. Raised from below, the gate rolled up and out of the way, each section leveling as it followed the curve of parallel steel rails. Five years later, Johnson invented the electric door opener to help weak people lift the heavy door. Johnson’s business became Overhead Door Corporation, which remains a leading manufacturer of garage doors.
Later developments included the slab door raised on a strong rail and doors that use lightweight materials such as steel insulated with Styrofoam and alloy steels and fiberglass that roll up into a compact footprint: roll-up security doors that are seen in many companies today.
Along with changes in technology came changes in style. As garages were gradually incorporated into homes, that is, moving from a separate building to one attached to part of the structure itself, the look and palette of garage doors evolved. No longer limited to the red-tinted barn door model or white paint of early 20th-century design, they began to echo French Provincial, English Stately, Colonial, and California ranch homes, among other popular architectural styles.
The modern garage, far from being an outbuilding or an afterthought, is as much a part of the typical American home as a living room and kitchen. And, in keeping with that status, garage doors today come in all the materials and styles preferred by homeowners: traditional wood, with or without glass inserts and with or without resin impregnation, hinged steel and alloys, fiberglass , vinyl siding and aluminum.
