More on automated parking in Boston
Many people wrote me after we published the article on automated parking, on Monday, Jan. 30. Most were recollections of having visited "automated" garages in Boston in the 1950s and later.
I usually include a good dose of history or background in the articles I write, but I didn't in this one -- and wish I had. I of course knew there were elevated garages in Boston in the past, and ones with elevators. And I knew that none of them were "fully automated," even though one breathless article in the 1950s described one of them as such. (All of them required attendants to handle the cars at some point.) But I had a lot of information to get into this article about the latest version of automated garages -- computerized ones, where no attendant is required -- and I didn't make room for any of the ancestors of these new garages and the technology.
However, there is a rich history of "automated" parking garages, and many of you recalled it vividly -- having visited them as children when your mothers were shopping downtown, and so forth. Many could not recall quite where the garages existed.
So I went to the Boston Globe archives -- the yellowed paper clips, which preceded the electronic kind -- and dug up some history that some of you may appreciate. Here's what I found. It's not a comprehensive history, but there are some interesting highlights.
A.S. Plotkin, a now-retired Globe transportation writer (I myself covered transportation for nine years, through 2001; now I cover commercial development), wrote in 1959 that the city had parking spaces for 18,000 cars. "What happens after June 25, when Central Artery looses its flood of autos on Boston?" the headline asked. The city had built four garages with ramps and two automatic parking structures.
One automated garage on Hayward Place (now a parking lot near Chinatown, which may be developed in the near future) was very successful at first. It was the first of a group of garages built with some degree of city assistance and opened in March 1958. (Some of the companies and stores it would serve: Bond's, Kennedy's, Jordan's, White's, Filene's, Richman's, Gilchrists', Locke-Ober, Woolworths', Bell Shops, Lerner Shops, Kresge's, R.H. Stearns, Chandlers', Slattery's, S.S. Pierce, First National Bank, Cinerama, Kay's Jewelers, Ripley's, Adam Hats, Thom McAn, Howard Clothes, Benson Clothes, Florsheim, Hyman Bros., Keith's Theatre, Hotel Avery, Hotel Touraine. How's that for a trip down Memory Lane?)
At 700 cars, it was the second-largest automated garage in the country, after one in Chicago, one article, written as it was being built, indicated. (All this information is from Globe clips.) But when it opened it was described as "the world's largest mechanical parking facility."
A larger garage -- 12 stories -- was then built nearby, at Bedford and Kingston streets. It was to open in July of 1959 and hold 725 cars. (One Lincoln Street, or the State Street Financial Center, is now on that site.)
An elevator garage at Fort Hill Square didn't do as well as some of the others at first. It was built to hold 650 cars.
The world's tallest mechanical parking garage (14 or 15 floors; 275 cars) also opened in March 1958, on Province Street, adjacent to what was then just called the Parker House. It is still there and will soon be torn down to make way for a new development. The word "automatic" was put in quotation marks in Mr. Plotkin's story in 1956, when buildings were being taken down to make way for the garage. This was privately built and owned.
Boston's first off-street parking garage (non-automated), "which some think looks like an Egyptian temple," opened at Lincoln and Essex streets, in the Leather District, in September 1950. It held 365 cars (some double-parked by attendants, who held onto the keys). Rates were 30 cents for the first hour, 25 cents for the second, and 15 cents per hour thereafter until 6 p.m. The 8 a.m.-6 p.m. fee was capped at $1. After 6 p.m. it was 35 cents.
There are also, of course, the lots and garages that have sets of elevators allowing one car to be parked under another that has been hoisted up. (By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe staff)
