Tormado Petroleo Home

Not so long ago, all garages were detached. We called them carriage barns or stables. We kept them separate because the horses lived there, too. Times have changed, of course. The modern architectural marvel known as an attached garage is a fairly recent development, born of America’s love affair with automobiles combined with our distaste for distance and weather. For traditional beauty and style, however, a garage glued to the end of one’s home cannot match the elegance of a carriage house perched at the end of a cobblestone driveway.

Does that sound too snobbish? I must admit that my own garage is firmly planted on the windward end of my simple little ranch house. If I could actually park inside, I’d never have to venture out into a blustery, snowy New York morning to start my vehicle. That doesn’t mean I cannot appreciate the innate superiority of a detached garage. If I had more land here, and a nice big line of credit, I’d construct a lovely two-story garage. My previous home had one: it had a turret! Sometimes motorists would pull into the driveway to ask me about it.

Attached and detached garages, our communities are filled with many fine examples of both, but is one type better than the other? We live in a built environment comprised of the old and the new, and in areas of varying densities ranging from high density urban to low density rural. Each property has unique characteristics and is impacted by varying criteria, depending upon these and other factors. However, our growing need to be more environmentally responsible must now play a significant role in our design strategies.

Historically, the garage evolved from the carriage house, which was commonly built away from the principal residence on account of the dust and the smells associated with horse-powered means of transport. As horsepower on four legs gave way to horsepower on four wheels, the garage evolved and became a structure built around the automobile. In the early twentieth century it was still quite common to see garages constructed as separate structures, set apart from the home, still very much like their carriage house precursors. Residential communities that sprang up outside of major metropolitan areas in the early part of the last century often featured long, narrow lots with a house in the front and a separate, detached “carriage house” garage near the rear of the property. The thinking was probably very much the same; keep those noisy, stinky things away from the house! The family car improved however, and became more acceptable, and with this came sweeping changes in how Americans lived.