cofloprop
Member
I am looking for ideas, thank you in advance.
How to re-create an authentic retro 1950's garage
- Thread starter cofloprop
- Start date
glentre
Well-known member
I was 16 in 1955, just getting started with working on cars....any cars. But, I don't remember anything different or special about garages in those days. If you want to have some commercial signs, gas pumps, oil can racks, etc from that era, I hope you have deep pockets. Don't forget to add some 50's music and play it loud.
Glen
Glen
Here’s a rabbit hole for ya bud
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=153099
And another
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=439115
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=153099
And another
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=439115
The comment about small tool boxes is a serious comment. Roll-cabs as they were called featured a lower roller box and as smaller upper tool chest. Not much difference in size than box store home owner grade lower priced unit. But the quality, thickness and durability were much better. Cars didn't have the variety of metric and SAE, the amount of specialty tools now wasn't required then. No electronic and few diagnostic tools. There were only about half a dozen car brands and most offered only one or two model lines. So, not many tools were needed.
Well funded service stations and car dealers and large, metal service station tool box combos for each pay. Think of the HF Icon brand tool centers with a middle bench, cabinets on each site and something overhead. But imagine it in a 50's style architecture. Like 50's ear steel kitchen cabinets.
The air station was common. Old style gas pumps, two of them. An air hose bell set up for the driveway. Cigarette machine. Old soda machine, bottles with a recycling rack. Mufflers and pipes, belts and hoses hanging from the rafters. those parts didn't last back then like they do today and shops kept common parts in stock.
A grease machine and lots of oil cans and related oil and gas supplies in stock. Most service stations were affiliated with a gas station brand, so they stocked all sorts of oil and gas lubricants and additives. The sorts of things we get from AutoZone today.
Well funded service stations and car dealers and large, metal service station tool box combos for each pay. Think of the HF Icon brand tool centers with a middle bench, cabinets on each site and something overhead. But imagine it in a 50's style architecture. Like 50's ear steel kitchen cabinets.
The air station was common. Old style gas pumps, two of them. An air hose bell set up for the driveway. Cigarette machine. Old soda machine, bottles with a recycling rack. Mufflers and pipes, belts and hoses hanging from the rafters. those parts didn't last back then like they do today and shops kept common parts in stock.
A grease machine and lots of oil cans and related oil and gas supplies in stock. Most service stations were affiliated with a gas station brand, so they stocked all sorts of oil and gas lubricants and additives. The sorts of things we get from AutoZone today.
MushCreek
Well-known member
You need one of those pin-up calendars with the clear overlays that you lift up to reveal more and more of the model. Hubba hubba!
Chuckster in NJ
Well-known member
Old coffee cans filled with assorted screws, wood cubby storage, dim lighting from incandescent light bulbs, wood work bench made from recycled 2x4’s, ash trays, collection of hand saws along with wooden handle screw drivers. Paint everything battleship gray or olive drab and place 12x12 maroon and gray asbestos tiles on the floor if you can find them.
BTW! Buy some old Play Boy magazines and hide them in the rafters.
BTW! Buy some old Play Boy magazines and hide them in the rafters.
firebirdparts
Well-known member
What most people prefer is the signage. Can’t say I blame them.
oldwino
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Don’t forget the Sun machine along the back wall and the square sided lube containers with the hand pumps
Old_Gold_Hand
New member
This is pretty much it. Add in a bunch of poisons and flammable stuff in metal cans.
Jeff Ivers
Well-known member
Are you referring to a homeowners garage or a commercial garage? If homeowners:
single car size
wood workbench stacked with coffee cans full of hardware
tools in surplus ammo cans
2 or 3 100 watt bulbs in ceiling mount ceramic fixtures
1 gal metal gas can
several quarts (metal) of oil
wood stove
church key from local car dealer or gas station
CHuDWah
Well-known member
Paint the inside walls a dark color (blue, green, brown, etc but not black) about 4 feet up from the floor and white the rest of the way up. Concrete floor left bare and preferably concrete block walls.
Shiftless
Well-known member
__________________
"A man's got to know his limitations." - Harry Callahan
You’ve posted a few more excellent details.
Love, your signature line... truly words to live by.
softailgarage
Well-known member
Gots to have a pepsi/coke & cigarette machines, as well as a drinking fountain.
softailgarage
Well-known member
And an in ground lift. Make sure its leaking oil so the property owner can cuss you out 50 years later
BlakeTheCarGuy
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Lots of old oil cans and old metal signs, small boxes and find some retro gas pumps maybe
Sent from my iPhone using Garage Journal
Sent from my iPhone using Garage Journal
Lassen Forge
Well-known member
Damn, I forgot all about those until just now. My uncle was scandalized when I realized the "secret" hiding in plain sight in his wall calender... Hell, I just thought it was cool.
+100 on the Sun machines, at least the diagnostic center and a 500 series distributor spinner. Wasta points? A Bear drive over alignment "rack". I learned how to check alignments on one of those...
One of those receipt machines - you write it out, pull the end, the customer gets the white one, you keep the yellow one. And the cigarette machine has to be a pull knob type, non-filters only. THEN you start the REALLY EXPENSIVE collectable chase to load it with original packs of smokes - Camels, Luckys, Chesterfields, Salems, Kools, Old Gold, Raleighs...
STILL love these. No stilly posts to have to drive between. You can still have one but it has to be in a double walled enclosure just as if it was an underground fuel tank.
BTW, Why the lack of love for a lube pit? That's Iconic. Lot of us old farts earned a princely $1.35 an hour doing oil changes and lube jobs from one of those when we were so young we worked under the table to get away with it.
firebirdparts
Well-known member
You need an ashtray made inside a little tire.
buzzworth
Well-known member
Use only slotted screws, no phillips head. And be sure they are rusty so they are stripped easily.
MushCreek
Well-known member
Wooden handled hammers, with a bunch of nails instead of a wedge to hold the head on.
ya got me all excited and nostalgic for the ones my dad used to bring home
so I went and bought one on eBay - I can use it hold small parts
BTW, maybe add some spiral ratchet screwdrivers to the garage