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firm active: 1907-1921 minneapolis, minnesota :: chicago, illinois |
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Garage for Mrs. Terrence W. McCosker residence
Purcell and Elmslie
Minneapolis, Minnesota 1915
Parabiographies entry, Volume for 1910
Text by William Gray Purcell
Job Date (in Parabiography): January, 1915
TERRY McCOSKER GARAGE, Minneapolis, Minnesota
By the beginning of the World War, the excellent Dodge automobile had been added to Ford's tin buggy, and the automobile was on its way into public acceptance. One after another our old clients were coming in for some place to put their new cars. We early got the idea that the best garage was the least conspicuous and our attempts at garage design were all conceived with the idea of keeping the building as low as possible, sinking it into the earth where the grade was above street, and even in those days of terribly tall limousine bodies, we discovered that the tallest Packard was only six feet four inches to the roof, therefore, the conventional eight foot garage door was entirely ridiculous. We at once reduced garage doors to seven feet high, and ten years later, when standard doors were still eight feet, we cut ours to six feet four in the clear. No car made in 1925 was as much as six feet, and most of the old high boys had disappeared from the market.
Collection: William Gray Purcell Papers, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota [AR:B4d1.9]
research courtesy mark hammons