MidCentury Suburbs Part 7: Modernize your garage door!

The garage door was yet another point of elaborate decoration for the MidCentury home. It provided a broad canvas for designers to decorate; in the 1950s and 1960s, the automobile was newly risen to its place of supreme importance, and its home was something to be celebrated -- as was the design innovation of the attached garage, a new luxury for most home buyers at the time.

Raynor Door, based not far from Chicago in Dixon, IL, was a major vendor of both doors and the patterns for them.

Two patterns were particularly prevalent, and can still be found by the dozens today:











But the designs ranged all over the place. Asymetrical patterns were common:





Another common theme involved a series of small, repeating patterns instead of one big one:






Such small patterns were often another reflection of the Old West influence on Chicago's MidCentury suburbia, as seen in this rope-like pattern:





Small patterns didn't have to cover the whole door; they could form a border pattern instead:



In the age of Kennedy's Camelot and the attendant New Formalism, you too can be a king!


With your very own caligraphy-styled monogram!


Or you can just be stunningly modern, classy, and geometrically smooth.





Or exuberantly modern...


You can shout your modernity to the world!




Or you can quietly wait for the world to notice it.


There is no end to the patterns. Still more may be seen at my Flickr account.