By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the boom of early car production was sufficient that people needed someplace to store their cars, for the first time ever.
A new type of outbuilding was required to house cars, but at first many people combined all forms of transportation under a single room: the carriage house, where horses and buggies were kept. Cars were parked right next to them, until such a time as cars replaced carriages as the popular method of getting around.
And, of course, there was the little matter of aroma. The higher class people who owned cars didn’t really want to drive around in them smelling of manure.
Early garages were more like indoor parking lots. Enterprising people would build large sheds that about 100 cars, and charge a monthly fee for people to park their car therein. By 1910 there were so many cars that there was no more room in these garages, and new methods of storing cars had to be sought.
Car owners began to look closer to home for a storage solution. Inspired by their carriage houses, they built separate buildings in which to house their cars – a garage, from the French word garer, which means to shelter and protect.
Early garage doors were essentially barn doors, double doors that opened out from the center. These doors sustained a lot of wear from daily opening, and also were easily blocked by debris or snow. A major innovation came with sliding tracks, which allowed the door to slide sideways away from the opening and hug the side of the building. This meant that the garage had to be at least twice as wide as the door, however. Another innovation, the folding door, allowed the door to fold along the side of the garage, saving space.
In 1921 C.G. Johnson invented what would become the most common garage doors in use today, folding overhead doors. A sliding track allowed the door to be lifted upwards and stored parallel to the ground. This was a heavy task, however, so in 1926 he invented the first electric garage door opener.
At first garage doors were made of wood and pretty much all one style. With time, style options became available, and the materials of the door evolved with technology. Galvanized steel doors became popular in the 1970s. Then came fiberglass, then composites, and eventually aluminum, to make it easier to match aluminum siding to the door.
With the advent of automatic garage door openers, making it no longer necessary to get out of the car, the garage door’s growth was complete. Today technological advances continue to be made, such as fingerprint technology to allow key-less security. But regardless of what garage doors look like in the future, one thing’s for sure. As long as there are vehicles, there’ll be garages, and garage doors!
Image by Ildar Sagdejev.
This blog sponsored by: Ramsey Door
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