Simple and inexpensive 
A two-car garage 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
Sq F THE country home is 
{not actually complete 
“} without its motor house, 
its utility and livability 
is greatly increased 
thereby. The motor 
with the railroad and the trolley in 
popularizing the country as a place of 
residence, but it has certainly greatly 
added to the pleasure of country life, 
and has aided and helped it in a multi- 
A Group of 
Model Motor Houses eae structures that are at 
may not yet compete for the 
Small Country Place 
By Ralph de Martin 
crete house with a wooded roof is, of 
course, no more fireproof than one with 
wooded walls, and the latter material 
is also favorably regarded for inex- 
once so useful and so necessary into 
which the artistic enters so slightly. No 
structure on the house grounds is so 
unobtrusive or so modest as the small 
garage. Its design is practically fixed 
by its form and dimensions, and being 
tude of ways. Many men who are able 
to look after their own cars, as well as 
drive them, now find it pleasanter and 
cheaper to live in the country than to remain in the city, where the cost 
of maintaining a car is considerable and the opportunities for using it 
not always of the best. The small motor house, therefore, has come to 
be regarded as quite necessary as an adjunct to many country places, 
and since it is entirely devoid of complexity in construction, a modest type 
of garage has come into use, some types of which are shown in the 
photographs on these pages. 
The small garage is, in truth, scarce more than the merest shelter 
for the machine. A certain amount of tool room is required, and some 
appliances, but unless the owner is a natural mechanic these had best 
be of the simplest kind, since no one should undertake extensive re- 
pairs to a machine without a full and complete knowledge of its struc- 
ture. Some tools, of course, will be imperative, since ordinary service 
will demand them; but the workshop, as it is understood in large garages, 
will be quite needless on the small place, and the building of the motor 
house is, therefore, reduced to the problem of the simplest shelter. 
Four walls and a roof, with a window or two, seems to be all that is 
required. The doors 
must, of course, be 
ample; they and 
the height of the 
walls must permit 
a sufficient head - 
room; beyond that, 
nothing more need 
be considered. Con- 
crete is a favorite 
material, since the 
concrete house is 
fireproof, but a con- 
strictly utilitarian in purpose calls for 
no unnecessary artistic features. One 
may, indeed, apply trellises to the 
walls, as has been done in one of the houses illustrated—to its great 
advantage, but the artistic problem of this small structure has yet to be 
leveloped. Meanwhile we may well remain content with the simplest 
of designs and with the most modest of exteriors. It is not so much 
the form of the house as the machine that it shelters. The latter is 
quite outside the scope of these brief notes, and it is perfectly obvious 
that any sort of a machine may be sheltered in any sort of a building 
large enough to contain it, and provided with a suitable means of get- 
ting in and out. 
Being a modest structure, the modest garage seeks the retirement of 
the most modest spot on the home grounds. It has no functions on the 
lawn, nor does it properly belong in a conspicuous place. It need only 
be big enough for the demands made of it and sufficiently accessible to 
meet every requirement. It may, therefore, be imagined at the rear of 
the lot, or beneath some shadowing trees, or embedded in shrubbery. It 
belongs in just such places and nowhere else. And this is not because 
its modesty is unartistic or offensive, but because such a simple little 
building has abso- 
lutely no other place 
to which it is suited. 
By its nature the 
garage is small, 
modest and retiring. 
Its usefulness is 
great, but it is a 
quiet usefulness that 
is enhanced by 
narrow dimensions, 
simple lines and re- 
tiring location. 
An effective situation 
With trellises and roof balustrade 
An ample shelter 
