Garage entered English in 1902 from French for shelter
A residential garage is a walled, roofed place—attached or detached—for storing cars, often with doors, remote openers, and leftover room for tools. Architect Charles Harrison Townsend noted the French loanword competing with “motor house” by 1908.
Uninsulated attached garages freeze in northern winters and bake in temperate summers, stressing cars and stored goods. Australian homes commonly hold one-and-a-half to triple bays; before the 1970s most sat detached beside the driveway. B&D’s Rolla Door, since 1956, still rolls corrugated steel onto an interior drum; newer tilt panels ride ceiling tracks with chain motors.
From the late 1970s attached garages with house access doors spread. Australian Standards set minimums—3.0×5.4 m single, 5.4×5.4 m double—though comfortable two-car use wants more width.
Most garages hold one or two cars, sometimes three. An attached one usually has a person door into the house as well as the larger vehicle door, and a locking door guards against theft and vandalism as well as weather. Many double as workshops for painting, woodworking and assembly, or as storage and entertainment space, and powered doors use a remote plus a sensor that halts the door if something blocks it. A carport, by contrast, has a roof but is not fully enclosed, so it offers no security, and in the rural American South detached timber-framed garages clad in sheet metal are called pole barns.
Leaving the wall between garage and house uninsulated while insulating the outer shell can be an expensive error, since heat moving across that wall wastes energy and chills or overheats adjoining rooms. The word garage now also refers to a collection of cars, not only the building.
Source: Garage (residential)
