Garage Door

If you ever get over Levittown, Long Iceland, you, the paradigm of the postwar period saw II case driven. Designed for young parents, the birth of the baby boom generation were, houses were built built in Levittown accordance with the principles of prefabricated housing for military personnel, but it contains the "must haves" of the post-war life: large yards, modern appliances, one TV antenna and other amenities. Promotional photos for a period of LevittownYears show that followed the development of the garage most important trends in the changing American lifestyle.

The earliest house from the 1940s show plans, boxy, Cape Cod-style homes with a living room, dining room, bathroom and two bedrooms. There were no entrances: the individual cars of most families had been parked on the street. By 1950, houses the company offered five brochure in a modified Cape Cod / Ranch style, each with a driveway, the one connected toCarport. And the sister suburb of Levittown, PA, 1954, the developers presented a variety of real estate, which included the most recent major in Home Design - a closed garage.

Today, if you are driving through the moderate suburbs, you're likely to see a gaping, open two-or three-car garage on the street, with spacious living quarters behind and above. The garage has the facade of the modern American home.

Growth in theImportance of the garage has coincided with the presence of more and more cars in the typical American family. When Henry Ford lowered the price for his Model T so that "to build the workers they can afford to buy them," to have the option of a car was a reality for low-income families, and by the decades from 1910 to 1930 car fleet grew steadily.

Auto sales fell, as the Second World War was limited incomes and the availability of raw materials, but millions more womenlearned to drive, because they held jobs previously filled by military personnel. By the time the subdivision construction boom began shortly after the war, almost every young couple could afford a house for $ 8,000 and a $ 800 dollar suit. In general, after the journey her husband to the S-Bahn station, uses the housewife the car for shopping and errands. (African American and other minority families, including many Jews in the suburbs were out of the housing opportunities restrictive provisions in the closureNorth and Jim Crow laws in the South. But that's another story.)

Soon, however, was a single car is not enough: Dad wanted the car of the family, and Mom took her own. In the 1960s, it was not unusual for a teenager to get a vehicle - often a grandparent old car - for his 16th Birthday. Instead of parking on the street or under a carport, a family now needs at least a double garage plus parking space for a third or even fourth vehicle. Today, in addition to a garage for two cars (or, more likely,a car, plus a penthouse worth of clutter), includes many suburban and rural homes, an additional, oversized garage for the RV.

Garage doors have changed. The oldest in the late 19 Century barn doors were just a farmer to bring a horse-drawn buggy in the garage, allows for loading and unloading or storage of the weather. They hinge to the outside or the side of rolled steel chains, such as a sliding closet door, and were for mechanized vehicles - tractors, cars, and usedtrucks - as they came into widespread use. Outbuildings, which originally built by the rich for the horses and carriages, automobiles began to hold.

By the early 1920s, when more and more middle-class families might Model Ts, published make a modified version of the garage. Typically, a small shed (often only eight or ten feet wide), the garage was not wide enough for a sliding door. A single revolving door would be to move heavy and awkward, so a split, hinged door, each half three or four feetwide and seven to eight meters high, was used instead. These old wooden doors can still be seen in the rural areas, they often homemade, with small windows and one-by-six-inch-diagonal cross-braces across the front. But her weight most value on hinges, bolts and framework, and if there was snow on the ground, it was out of the way before opening the doors could be shoveled swing.

The invention of the articulated (hinged) door was the first real innovation in garage doors.A door hinge was divided into vertical sections, roll or slide back into the workshop. In 1921, Mr. CG Johnson overhead garage door designed for horizontal articulation. Lifted from the bottom, the door and rolled out of the way, smoothing out each section as it followed the curve parallel steel chains. Five years later, Johnson invented the electric can opener, people without power to help to raise the heavy door. Johnson's company was the overhead Corporation,still one of the leading manufacturers of garage doors.

Subsequent developments, including the door panel on a strong track raised and insulated doors with lightweight materials such as polystyrene-steel and steel alloys, and fiberglass, which roll in a compact space - the roll-down security doors in many companies today.

Together with changes in technology came changes in style. The garages were built gradually in the houses - that is, according to a separate building attached to one partthe structure itself - the look and the range of garage doors developed. Not just on the red-colored barn-door model, or the white color of the early 20th Century design, they began to Provincial French, English Manor, Colonial Echo and California ranch houses, among other popular styles.

The modern garage, far from being an annexe or an afterthought, is as much a part of the typical American home as a family room and kitchen. And, in accordance with this status,Garage doors now favored in all materials and styles of homeowners: the traditional wood - with or without glass insert and with or without impregnation - are articulated steel and alloys, fiberglass, vinyl coatings, and aluminum.