While you may not remember, there was a time when garages didn’t come standard with the average home. As of 2017, nearly 70 percent of Americans own a home with a garage or carport. Whether it’s detached or attached, a garage is meant to protect your belongings, shield your cars from extreme temperatures and serve as a space to have a workshop or small business.
 
But that wasn’t always true. The modern-day version of the garage didn’t even appear until the early 20th century, so what did people do before? Well, here’s a brief history for you. 

​Pre-modern times
In the 1800s, long before the modern garage door was invented, there was a strong need for storage of animals, horse-drawn carriages and bicycle. Whether they were built as full barns or traditional carriage houses, these simple structures helped people to care for their prized possessions.
 
These carriage houses often held both the wheeled enclosure, along with the horses that pulled it. This simple structure was built with the most basic components of a garage, including dirt flooring, four standard walls and doors that swung open from the inside, out. 

The advent of the automobile
Detroit, Michigan is considered to be the birthplace of the automotive industry, as Ford began manufacturing and mass-producing cars there in 1903. Even today, Detroit remains the automotive capital of the world with major companies Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles rooted there.
 
Because of the automobile’s adoption, many people were looking for safer spaces to store and protect the expensive purchase. Earlier versions of parking structures included public options, called outbuildings, where drivers could pay a monthly fee to park. These were often heated, cleaned and maintained by the building owner, leaving car owners with all the luxury perks, without the work or any added costs of building or maintaining a personal structure.
 
But over time, people found this structure lacking in convenience. Drivers and car owners began building private garages near their homes, to eliminate the additional burdens. Yet, people were confronted with the same trouble as the doors on the carriage houses, as these outward swinging doors could be impossible to open during snow or heavy wind. This left drivers with a desire for the next iteration. 
 
Back in Detroit, in 1921, C.G. Johnson invented the first overhead door, which lifted up and folded inward to solve the issue with the outward swinging doors found on carriage houses. Just a few years later, he went on to also create the first electric door, which has evolved to fit the current technologies and trends.