Garage door costs in Detroit

Detroit's historic-district reviewers have come down on both sides of a garage with one wide overhead door instead of two.

In March 2023, the Historic District Commission approved a new rear-yard garage in the Atkinson Avenue Historic District with a single steel overhead door. Its conditions were about everything around the door. The siding had to be wood or smooth cement fiber, because the commission found vinyl doesn't look like the traditional wood it imitates. The garage doors, trim and siding had to take a color that suits the house's trim.

Three years earlier, staff read a Rosedale Park case differently. The garage behind a 1926 Tudor Revival house on Faust was a three-car, three-door frame building, leaning, with part of its roof collapsed. The owner planned a two-car replacement with one 16-foot overhead door. In a January 2020 report, staff wrote that a single overhead door is a contemporary design and not a feature of older, historic garages. They quoted the district's Elements of Design, which describe its original garages as modest one-story boxes with single or double doors, and called the old overhead doors character-defining features.

Staff's recommended condition was two overhead doors for the new garage. Ideally the old doors would be reused. If they were too far gone, the new ones were to match them in design, color and texture, with a similar arrangement of panels and glass.