A while back Johannes Dutch posted a video of a guy in Holland who managed to park his 155cm wide Fiat Panda in a 161cm (61 inches) wide garage. Well, there’s no way this Buick is going to fit in this “garage”. And just how wide is it?
Using the 30″ height of the table on the porch as a reference, I came up with right around 60″, or about the same as that Dutch one. Of course this one was almost certainly never intended to be a garage, as even a Model T would have been an impossible fit, unless the fenders were removed. But then this house was built well before then anyway, in the 1880s or so. Which makes one wonder what it was intended for? A narrow buggy? But presumably those folks that kept a horse and buggy also had a little carriage house outbuilding for that.
Paul, is this original to the house? It seems very unlikely that someone built a swanky new house with a really awkward looking layout like this.
My guess is that this extension was added and that the front utility entrance was needed for basement access that had been on the side of the existing building.
Paul, is this original to the house?
Sorry; I wasn’t around when it was first built. 🙂
Seriously, it was quite likely added at some point, as is the case with so many houses that old.
I have to wonder if this isn’t an access door to the cellar based on the height of the porch and the fact that the split level/mid entry styles of houses hadn’t been dreamed up yet or at least were very far from common. I know of a lot of house that have outside entry to their cellar/basement which is really only ~1/2 under ground though that is not common on the front of the building.
It would be hilarious if the main level of the house continued straight across behind the doors. But I suspect that there’s a boring low ceiling stairwell to the cellar, and some sort of half height cabinet above the stairwell inside the house.
I have relatives whose house was destroyed by a tornado. They rebuilt on the same foundation and extended the house on the end where the inside basement steps are, so now there’s a room between the basement steps and the garage.
If you’ve ever lived in a country club community, you’d immediately recognize it as a Golf Cart garage. 🙂
But really, I wonder if that space also opens to the back of the house somehow. It’s an odd space otherwise even notwithstanding the door size.
Yeah I immediately thought of a golf cart garage, which I’ve seen many times as many of the houses on or near the golf course have them in the community where I own a house I currently use as a rental.
Access to the furnace? (assuming this house doesn’t have a basement)
That actually sounds like a pretty good theory. I can see the opening being specifically sized for the unloading of coal.
Coal? In Oregon? Perish the thought. There’s none around, but the place was awash in endless trees. Houses were heated with wood, the bark and small scraps from the mills, more specifically, which back then was practically free as all the mills didn’t know what to do with it.
Even when we moved here in 1993 one could still get the stuff for free if you hauled it. Nowadays it all gets used commercially for bark and compost and other products.
But yes, this might well have been the place they stored the stuff as well as where the furnace was put, added after the house was built.
I had an old house with a similar doorway walled off and was told it was to bring coal in.
Narrow buggies were fairly common, used by salesmen and doctors.
https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/312890
But this looks like a business entrance. The wing was something like a repair shop or blacksmith shop attached to the house, with a double door for large items.
A blacksmith shop would have a forge, and it seems really small to bring machines in for repair plus house tools. Also, it seems unlikely that a tradesman would have been the original owner of this house, or that the original neighbors would have wanted a utilitarian business fronted on their street.
A jeweler, watchmaker, doctor, barber, etc would have a conventional door and storefront instead of barn doors.
A friend of my mine has a similar setup. It’s his laundry room and furnace room.
I’m guessing it originally had double swinging doors and wasn’t intended to be a garage of any sort. It does look like the “garage” itself is wide enough to accommodate a car and it would be easy to widen the door enough to allow a car to pass through. OTOH I’m not sure it has enough length to be a garage.
If there isn’t enough length, you could reposition the stairs to jut out to the front rather than to the right, and widen the opening as much as possible. Then add an awning on the front and you have a carport or garage (if enclosed) that sticks out from the front of the house just like the porch, not an uncommon design. The stairs tweak might be necessary even if the existing indoor section is long enough for a car.
When you see a little unexplained door on an older house in Britain it’s often a coal bunker, but they were usually a bit smaller than this.
Obviously, the former owners had imported a Peel P50.
Can’t see the aPeel of this car. Sometimes it is less embarrassing and more comfortable to just walk.
My guess is also access for coal. Nice one regarding the Peel!
I was once working with a team developing a solar vehicle to get to the south pole.
On the brief, it had a width of 3200mm Yet had to roll on/roll off an 8′ container (access about 7’8″)
That sounds like a Coldweather Classic we need to hear about!
Unfortunately it didn’t get past early development.
And of course dimensions weren’t the only brief contradiction.
The door would be large enough for a motorcycle. Perhaps Ghost Rider was a former tenant? Just because you’re bonded to a demon doesn’t mean you can’t have convenient off street parking.
If a coal door is out of the question, my wild guess is that it was once a doctor’s house, because that door looks about right for carrying a body through. And though house calls were common, it wasn’t at all unusual for doctors to have patients come or be brought to their home, where they might also have an office. I formerly worked in a large old house (same era) that had been built for a doctor and was told bodies were often stored there in the cellar until a funeral could be held.
Our garage in San Francisco was put in around 1950, when cars were ENORMOUS but we call parking in it, “threading the needle” because it’s so narrow at 71″ wide. When I buy new cars, I have to measure them mirror to mirror as new cars have porked up as much as a healthy (or unhealthy) American. Our 2002 BMW 325it fits (68.5″) easily- but virtually no cars besides the smart and MINI will get in today. Come on, manufacturers- stop making cars wider and wider!
It probably was a place to store gardening tools and other tools for working on the house. This was probably added later in the 20th century.
However if this was a part of the house from the day it was built, it might have been used as a larder to store food /cured meats.
My 1931 house has 8′-wide garages, but most of the houses in my neighborhood were built ~1910 and some had narrow 7′-wide garages, which I guess would give room to open one door on a 5′-8″-wide Model T.