Edina Country Club and Morningside Garage Doors: 1920s Carriage Houses, Odd-Size Openings, and What the Historic District Allows

I live a few minutes from the Country Club District, across the creek in St. Louis Park, and I get called into it regularly. The houses are Tudor, Colonial Revival and the occasional Mediterranean, built after Thorpe Brothers platted the 14 blocks between Minnehaha Creek, Sunnyside Road, Arden Avenue and West 50th Street in 1924, and the garages were built to match them: brick or stucco, detached, tucked at the back of the lot, sized for a 1928 car. Morningside, the older neighborhood north of Sunnyside Road that joined Edina in 1966, has the same garages with a little less brick. This guide is what I find behind those doors and what I do about it, with real 2026 prices.

What the historic district does and does not require

Homeowners here ask me this before anything else, so here is what the City of Edina publishes. The Country Club District is a Heritage Landmark (designated 2003), and the plan of treatment requires a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Heritage Preservation Commission for two kinds of work: demolishing or building a principal dwelling or a detached garage, and significant structural changes to a street-facing facade. Replacing a garage door in the same opening on an existing garage is not on that list. The job that does get reviewed is the one where somebody wants a 9-foot or 16-foot opening in a garage that faces the street, because that means cutting the header and the brick. If that is your plan, call the City’s planning staff before you call me; if you are keeping the opening, read on.

One honest note: I am a garage door technician, not a permit expert. The City’s page and plan of treatment are the source, and they can change; check them before a structural change.

Problem 1: the opening is not a catalog size

Catalog doors are 8, 9 and 16 feet wide and 7 or 8 feet tall. The openings I measure in Country Club run 7 feet 8 inches to 8 feet 6 inches wide and 6 feet 6 inches to 7 feet tall, under a header that leaves 4 to 8 inches of headroom and side room that is sometimes 3 inches on one side. A standard door forced into that opening leaves a gap, binds on the jamb, or never clears the header. The fix is not to cut the garage. A steel door is built to the inch for the real opening, the track is a low-headroom set so the top section tips back with 4 to 6 inches, and the hardware is chosen for the side room that exists. More on low-headroom garages across the west metro.

Problem 2: the wood door

A fair number of these garages still have a wood door: an original pair of swing-out carriage doors, or a 1950s to 1970s wood sectional that replaced them. Wood here fails from the bottom: the bottom rail sits in meltwater and road salt every March, it rots, the door gets heavy on one side, the hinges pull out of soft wood, and the spring that was right for the door at 150 pounds is wrong for it at 220. I repair what can be repaired (new hinges and a strut on a sound door, a bottom seal, a spring sized to the real weight), but when the bottom section is soft or two sections are gone, replacement is the cheaper decision over five years. Panel replacement cost, and when one panel is enough.

The replacement that fits this neighborhood is a steel sectional door with a carriage-house panel design, optional top windows and decorative hinges and handles. From the street it reads like the swing-out doors of the 1920s; from the inside it is an insulated steel door that rolls up on track, takes an opener, and does not need paint every third summer. New insulated door from $2,000 installed, $2,800 for a 2-inch steel sandwich door; a carriage-house design with windows is quoted after measuring. What moves the price of a new door.

Problem 3: no opener, or an opener from the 1980s

Many of these garages never had an opener because there was nowhere to hang a rail. Two answers. When there are 6 inches or more of headroom and a clear ceiling, a LiftMaster belt-drive on a rail, which is quiet and does not shake the garage. When there is no headroom at all, a LiftMaster wall-mount (jackshaft) opener mounted beside the torsion shaft, with no motor or rail on the ceiling. New LiftMaster myQ opener $650 to $1,500 installed by model; the wall-mount is at the upper end and the right answer for most of these garages. An opener from the 1980s with no safety sensors gets replaced, not repaired. Opener repair and replacement cost, and the LiftMaster models I install.

Problem 4: extension springs with no safety cables

Old detached garages often still run on a pair of stretch springs along the horizontal track, and a lot of them have no safety cable through the spring. When one of those breaks it goes across the garage. On any visit to one of these doors I either add safety cables or, when the door is being replaced or the springs are due, convert the door to a torsion spring on a shaft above the opening, which is what every new door uses. Spring replacement $150 to $350 for a single door, up to $200 more for a heavy or double door; code SPRINGS waives the service call and includes new cables, because here a snapped cable is the usual reason a door ends up off its track. Spring replacement cost in Minnesota.

Street by street

Along Browndale, Wooddale, Edina Boulevard, Drexel, Casco and Bruce the garages are mostly brick or stucco, single or one-and-a-half car, and the ones that face the street are the ones to be careful with (see the Certificate note above). The Country Club Road and Moorland houses closer to the creek have the lowest garages I measure in Edina. In Morningside, on Grimes, Lynn, Oakdale and Sunnyside, the garages are a mix of 1920s detached and 1950s replacements, with more wood doors still in service than anywhere else in the city. South of 50th, the Arden Park and Golf Terrace blocks are the same era with slightly larger garages. The rest of Edina, including the wide 1990s doors on the west side, and my Edina service page.

What a visit looks like

I measure the opening, the headroom and the side room, weigh the door by hand to size the spring, check the bottom section and brackets for rot and rust, and tell you what is wearing before it fails. Repairs are done the same visit from the truck. For a new door you get a written price after measuring and before anything is ordered, the old door leaves with me, and nothing on the garage gets cut. If you are not sure whether your plan needs the City’s review, I will tell you to call them first rather than guess.

A note for Edina Chamber members

David’s Urgent Garage Door joined the Edina Chamber of Commerce in October 2026. Member businesses, their employees and their customers: mention the Chamber and code SPRINGS for the service call waived and new cables included with any spring replacement. Commercial doors on the 50th and France and Southdale shops, and property-manager accounts, are welcome too.

Split-level with the garage under the bedrooms? My tuck-under garage guide covers the headroom, the drain at the bottom of the door and the noise upstairs.

Different decade, different garage? The Garage Door Age Check gives the short list for any garage from the 1920s to today.

Country Club and Morningside garage door questions

The other half of Edina, the 1960s ramblers and split-levels with the attached garage under the bedroom, has its own guide: Edina split-level garage doors.

If the door is stuck open, crooked or will not lift and it cannot wait, this is what my emergency garage door repair service is for. Call (763) 265-7671, day or night.

Written by David Tuito, owner and lead technician of David’s Urgent Garage Door, St. Louis Park. Minnesota-registered contractor #IR790255, insured, in business since 2019, 4.9 stars on Google. David answers the phone and does the work himself. About David · (763) 265-7671