A garage is so much more than just a place to park a car. And the history of garage doors includes a long line of innovations and adaptations that have given today’s home and business owners a lot of options when choosing the perfect garage door. Let’s take a look at the many twists and turns in the history of garage doors:
The history of garage doors dates back thousands of years, to 3500 BC or perhaps even earlier. That’s when the first wheels appeared. Since the first moment humans used wheels for transportation, they’ve been looking for places to park their vehicles.
City and town gatehouses served as the first vehicle storage spaces back in ancient times. In the 18th and 19th centuries, carriage houses appeared as storage. In places like colonial America, these carriage houses were rarely attached to homes, meaning owners had to walk through the elements to get to their carriages. These carriage houses weren’t much more than barns, featuring dirt floors, simple walls, and gates that served as doors.
Carriage house doors hung from hinges and swung outward. To prevent sagging, the doors themselves included Z- and X-shaped designs that strengthened the doors and distributed their weight.
At the end of the 1800s, cars appeared and slowly began replacing horses and carriages. By the early 1900s, thanks to Henry Ford, cars began to proliferate — and storage became a problem. Garages began to appear, but only slowly. In fact, the term garage first appeared in the English dictionary in 1902, a derivative of the French term “garer,” which means shelter or cover.
The earliest cars needed shelter first because they were open — they didn’t have roofs. Early cars were also expensive, and owners didn’t want them to get soaked in a rainstorm or fill with snow. Because of this, many car owners parked them in barns or other existing structures. In urban areas without these kinds of structures, large, private garages appeared. These garages charged a monthly fee, but they still weren’t a perfect solution.
Soon cars became widespread. Not only did the private, fee-based garages begin to overflow, but automobile owners also started to note their shortcomings. For example, to get to your car in a private garage, you had to walk or find other transportation to get to the garage in the first place. This setup subtracted from the convenience of automobiles.
This is when personal garages began to appear. The Sears Roebuck catalog offered portable garages and mail-order garage kits, and the Sweet’s Catalogue offered the first upward operation garage door in 1906.
Early garage doors looked a lot like carriage house doors. They featured swing-out doors that created a problem when it was snowing or otherwise blocked, because the doors wouldn’t open. These carriage house-style doors wore down quickly and required regular replacement. Sectional doors soon appeared as a solution to these problems.
You’ve probably never heard of C.G. Johnson, but he’s the inventor of the garage door featuring overhead operation. Johnson created the first overhead garage door in 1921, and he took advantage of another new development when he created the first electric garage door in 1926.
By the middle of the 20th century, architects began designing homes with garages attached. This made garages as convenient as possible, allowing homeowners to access their vehicles without having to step out into the elements. After World War II, cars grew larger and larger, and many households began to own two vehicles. Garages grew to accommodate multiple larger vehicles. By the 1960s, the garage represented about 45 percent of a home’s square footage.
Through most of the 20th century, garage doors were made of wood. The 1970s brought a shift in materials, making steel, aluminum, fiberglass and other materials. These new materials were a predecessor to the unmatched options home and business owners enjoy today, including composite materials with synthetic insulation. Aluminum and glass garage doors are also popular with the owners of contemporary homes.
Through the 1980s, garage doors did not retract when they came into contact with something. This created an expensive mistake if a car was left parked under a door, and it created a dangerous mistake if the door closed on a child or pet. A nationwide law passed in the 1990s that required sensors that would signal garage doors to retract if they came into contact with an object before reaching the threshold.
Interestingly, many homeowners are now seeking out carriage house-style garage doors that include the convenience of upward operation. About 80 percent of homes today include at least a single-car garage, and nearly 20 percent of newly constructed homes include three-car garages. Given the convenience a garage presents, it serves as the front door for many families.
There’s also significance beyond vehicle storage. 85 percent of homeowners use their garages for something beyond simple storage of their vehicle. For example, many modern corporations like Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Google and Amazon first started in garages. Where would they be without garages and garage doors?
What will you use your garage for? How would you like it to look? At Custom Overhead Doors, we have served homeowners in Raleigh, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Greenville and other North Carolina communities for more than 25 years. We can help connect you to high-quality, durable garage doors from respected manufacturers. Contact us today!
Automatic garage doors are an essential component of modern American homes, to the point where we can no longer imagine a house without one. It’s easy to forget they’re a fairly recent architectural development that went through numerous iterations and innovations before it became what it is today.
In the following article, we’ll take a brief look at the history of garage doors and discuss some of the most impactful technological advancements that transformed the way we think of them. Read on to learn how the wooden carriage doors of old became the sleek, all-automatic, contemporary glass garage doors homeowners in San Diego love so much!
When was the first garage door invented?
Garage doors were originally invented during the beginning of the 20th century. Cars were becoming increasingly commonplace and affordable, and people needed somewhere to store them while they weren’t driving them.
Here’s how it went:
Carriage house era. Carriage houses were buildings where people kept their horse and buggy, so it stood to reason that they’d park their cars there as well. Unfortunately, keeping cars around horse manure didn’t do any favors to the way the cars smelled. An alternative was needed.
Large public or private-owned garages were established to meet the needs of car owners. These big garages were widely used until the 1910s, when they fell off due to there simply being too many cars for them to accommodate.
The first garages, and the first garage doors, were invented around 1912. They were basically sheds equipped with a large barn door. These double doors were connected to the garage with strap hinges and they opened outwards, just like regular barn doors. This was far from ideal, as the doors suffered significant wear and could be especially difficult to open during wintertime.
Sliding garage doors were developed. However, they weren’t foldable, so the garage had to be at least double the width of the door. Eventually, the sliding door was split into sections, which were then hinged together at intervals, enabling the door to fold around a corner. This saw the creation of the first “real” garage door.
When did automatic garage doors become popular?
An inventor named C.G. Johnston invented the first overhead garage door in 1921. He further improved his amazing invention in 1926, when he built the first electric garage door opener. The first remote-controlled garage door openers came in 1931, and the first mass-produced, radio-controlled garage door opener became available in 1954.
However, automatic garage doors didn’t become practical for home use until the 1970s, when the split rail was invented, which made custom garage doors a lot easier to design. Improvements to the safety mechanisms of automatic garage doors during the 1980s and the 1990s further increased their popularity.
Another major factor was the shift in materials. Throughout most of the 20th century, wood was the go-to material for garage doors. This changed during the 1970s, when steel, fiberglass, aluminum, and other materials became more popular. This transformed garage doors into a major aesthetic element of the modern American home.
Who installs state-of-the-art contemporary glass garage doors in San Diego?
Radford Garage Doors & Gates of San Diego is a long-standing provider of garage door installation, repair, replacement, and maintenance services. Whether you’re looking to install a highly efficient garage door or book annual maintenance for your existing door, you can count on us to meet your needs with utmost diligence.
We serve the entirety of San Diego, so you can rely on us regardless of whether you’re located in the suburbs or at the very heart of Gaslamp District. Contact us today if you’d like to book our services or learn more about who we are and what we provide.