Yesterday’s Carriage House is the Garage of Today

Quick, can you name the largest appliance in your home that moves? That’s right – it’s your garage door! Garage doors are by far the biggest parts of a home that are designed to move easily and regularly—usually several times a day. Most of us take them for granted, at least until garage door problems crop up, but the garage doors of today are the result of many people’s innovative thinking and clever engineering design.

Garage doors were of course first invented with the advent of automobiles. Initially, cars were stored, or “stabled,” alongside the other main form of transport—horses—sharing the same building. This shelter was known as a carriage house. But it turned out to be less than ideal, due mostly to the fact that stables have their own unique odor and it’s not necessarily one you want to smell when driving your car. So, separate buildings were constructed to house automobiles: garages and stables.

The first garages were like mini-barns for cars, with wide double doors much like barn doors that swung outward to open and close. Those early garage doors were difficult and time consuming to operate, especially after a snowfall when a lot of digging had to be done before either side of the garage door could be pulled open. Soon, the powers of human invention developed a track on which the garage doors to slide. The doors now slid sideways to open and shut. But this meant that garages had to be much bigger structures and have enough room to store the garage doors on their tracks when fully opened.

The decade of the 1920s saw two huge innovations in garage doors that many homeowners still enjoy the benefits of today. A man named C.G. Johnson, who lived in Hartford City, Indiana, came up with both of these breakthroughs. In 1921, he invented overhead garage doors. Instead of opening to the sides of the garage, C.G. Johnson’s overhead garage door lifted upward, into a position parallel to the ceiling. And five years later, in 1926, Johnson designed the first automated electric garage door opener, to lighten the heavy work of opening garage doors.

Since then, there have been many other innovations in garage doors. The materials used to make them evolved from wood to steel to fiberglass. Nowadays, you can even get insulated garage doors. Also, the design involved in manufacturing today’s doors has produced a huge variety of styles for your garage door. You can choose from many different colors, garage doors with windows or even match the architectural details of your house with doors designed in styles such as Craftsman, Colonial, or even yes – Carriage House style. Although today’s carriage house is certainly a far cry from yesteryear’s carriage house built to shelter horses as well as cars.

About the Author:
Cathy Wempe of AE Door, a Cincinnati garage doors retailer. For 30 years, AE Door has been an industry leader in residential and commercial garage doors, garage door repair, and window replacement.