By Gordon Bock

From the opening of the auto age, garage doors scored serious style points. Ingenious design also played a big part in vehicular building closures through the first decades of the last century. The point for old-house owners today is that if the entrance to your vintage garage—or a new period garage—is graced by nothing more than a Disco-era roll-up door, it can stand out as a visual mixed message, if not a glaring anachronism. Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to find a period-perfect portal for your flivver, as this primer on historic garage door types and styles shows.

Top: Jeld-Wen

Swinging Doors
The most prosaic way to open garage doors from 1900 on was to hinge them at their sides in mating pairs, like the proverbial barn doors. Common on multiple and single-car garages and wide by necessity, such doors were often paneled frames reinforced with characteristic diagonal braces to prevent sagging. Modern versions can open traditionally or actually be roll-up doors cleverly designed to look like hinged versions.

Bottom: Carriage House Door Co.

Sliding Doors
Garages that accommodated two cars were also big enough for sliding doors—a single large door for each bay. Suspended by a pair of parallel hanger-and-rail systems, one door would pass the other when the bay was opened (inset below). Since these broad doors were top-hung, they could be built with a simple frame backed by edge-matched boards—typically V-jointed. The look of large V-jointed doors is popular today in a variety of opening systems.

Top: Richards-Wilcox

Door Hardware
The rapid growth of the automobile spawned a demand for private garages, and with it new forms of hardware. Though early garage door hardware, from hangers to locks, was primarily practical, exposed hinge leafs and handles often carried some of the style motifs of their time. Today, many period garage door manufacturers offer decorative (as well as functional) door hardware, and there are hardware manufacturers that can supply specialized hardware, such as heavy-duty hinges.

Top: Designer Doors

Complementary Designs
According to an early 20th-century text, “Whenever possible, the garage should be constructed to correspond to the residence to which it belongs,” advice that was carried down to the doors as well. Carpenter- or shop-made probably as often as they were ordered from a lumberyard, doors could easily pick up on fenestration patterns or other details in the house, an option possible today with custom and stock doors alike.

Top: Designer Doors

Multiple Doors
One of the most distinctive 1920s garage door patterns was the three-door swinging and sliding combination. Here, multiple doors, 32” wide, hang from a single track that spans the entrance, curving back where it meets the side walls. The doors are suspended from swivels and are hinged together at their sides so that they fold, accordion style, against an inner wall. Recommended two generations ago for large garages, the multidoor look has found favor again, especially for adding historically appropriate eye relief to contemporary three-car garages.