Garage Door Histories

The history of the garage door is very much the history of American travel.

From horses to buggies to what was then called the "horseless carriage", mostly jokingly but often tinged with awe, the changes in modes of human transportation in the United States of America are reflected in the buildings and doors that housed these technologies.

Back when travel meant simply walking, or at best, riding a horse, storage spaces for the technology of travel included open fields, a post with some rope, or at best a barn. As people become more sophisticated and often moved to 'large' (for the times) cities, these storage areas changed, too. They became more efficient, often communal, storing many horses for an entire block of inhabitants.

Then the buildings needed to grow again, as people moved from simply horses to horses and carriages. This was the preferred form of travel for many generations, and people stored their 'buggies' in barn-like structures, with heavy doors that swung out, often done in a Victorian or cottage style.

When people finally switched to driving cars, they kept these out of home structures, and maintained the french-derived name "garage". But as the technology for automobiles improved, so did the technology for their homes. Electricity and lights were installed. Eventually, doors worked via garage door openers, which could be flipped on or off.

Then we went to a remote system, where one could press a button and have a garage door open automatically.
As time pushed inextricably forward, so do our technologies. What will come next in the world of vehicles? How will our storage structures change to meet demand? How will opening technologies shift in the coming decades and generations? We will just have to see.