If you ordered your house in the mail, some 90 or 100 years ago, and you had enough land (and money for a car) left, you might have wanted a garage as well.
So, not surprisingly, all the major kit house manufacturers–in the DC area mainly Sears and Lewis, but also Aladdin and Gordon-Van Tine–sold garage kits in their catalogs as well. The styles often neatly matched the homes with their exposed rafters, hipped roofs, pretty cedar siding or whatever features the house itself sported.
This blue garage here I spotted during the Takoma Park House & Garden Tour yesterday, in the backyard of a lovely Sears house. (Note that the former driveway had long been blocked by a deck; most modern cars no longer fit into these garages.)
Trying to verify that it was indeed a kit garage, I went through stacks of 1920s catalogs last night–only to find out the model was actually sold not by Sears but by one of its biggest competitors.
“Ready-Cut Garage No. 102” was offered in the 1923 catalog of Gordon Van-Tine.
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