When did garages become commonplace?

The history of the garage door - The search for the perfect carriage house

this has some Boomerang...apparently the garage as we know it came to be around 1921 if I am reading correctly.

from the historyof.net

The history of garage doors - the search for the perfect carriage house

reading between the lines it look like the first real "for car only garages" at peoples homes appeared from 1915-20

well great minds as they say

Probably right after carriage houses went out of style.

That is a compliment to me :wink: to be sure dj!

Ha! No kidding about that great minds thing. Lucky me to get two of them to help me out. Thanks!

dj's is easier to read...you are very welcome Boomerang.

Both of my own earlier houses, one in southern california and one in northern, built in 1913 and the other possibly in 1916, had separate wooden garages. My aunt's house, built probably in the twenties, which yours reminds me of, Boomer, had a two car stucco garage separate from the house. All of those were accessible by alleys.

Im gonna venture a guess and say that cars had something to do with it.

That was what I was going to say - but then it seemed kind of like a smart-@$$ answer! :wink:

Usually when I gt to see a thread, all the smart ass answers are already taken.

Yeah but you still manage to add your own flavour, FM

I'd say after WW II when ownership of cars became commonplace. When you could walk to work there was no need for a car and hence no need for a garage.

There is, in Champaign, Illinois, immediately across the street from Urbana, Illinois (the street dividing them is unimaginatively called Division Street), a late Victorian era house. It has a garage, and it is stoutly built, more stoutly built that most houses as they are constructed these days. There is a wooden pediment above the doors, and a sculpture is attached, which displays a man wearing a snap-brimmed cap, reversed on his head, with goggles pushed up to the top of his forehead, and an absolutely demonic grin on his face, as he hunches forward over an old-fashioned steering wheel, of the kind which was common before the Great War. I've not seen it in nearly 30 years, and often wonder if it has been preserved.

The thing is, with my two craftsman houses, I know the date of the houses, or think I do, and not the garages. The date of the garages is presumptive, and since they meshed with the house structure, make sense to be of-a-piece, if not built with the house.

Manditory garages probably arrived with suburbia.

It would be worth the drive to see if it's still there, Setanta!

I think you're probably right about suburbia, Noddy. Where I live was most likely once considered suburban, now it's the city proper. Some of the garages around here are car cathedrals - beautiful fir lined things.

I suspect ours might be fir but when the white paint bombs went off here they even covered the garage walls. I should investigate that before we knock the damn thing down......

I think that garages became popular in California because there are no basments in houses and everyone needs a place to put all there best junk and other stuff.