Parking Structures

History

Although a few parking mass garages were built early in the 20th century, elevated parking structures did not start to become common until the 1920s, when the number of automobile owners had increased substantially, and more people were using their cars for transportation into urban areas. The familiar rectangular, multistory concrete structure with ramps providing access was well-established by the end of that decade, and some structures were quite large. For instance, the Autorimessa in Venice, Italy, designed by Eugenio Miozzi, had spaces for 2,500 cars.

One difference between these early parking garages and those designed today is that the early structures were usually enclosed, like warehouses, and often embellished with elaborate exterior decoration. Although some were notable in aesthetic terms, they had limited ventilation, allowing for the dangerous buildup of carbon monoxide within the garage.

In the 1950s, different patterns of parking structure location evolved in Europe and the United States. In European cities, many of which had been devastated by World War II bombs, a typical model included a pedestrian zone in the central downtown area, with multistory automobile garages built around the perimeter. In 1963, the English civil engineer Colin Buchanan predicted that the car park would become an expected part of destinations, including workplaces and shopping areas.

In the United States, rapid suburbanization and the growth of shopping malls also made planning for parking an important consideration in new construction. In fact, the term parking center was once proposed for what is now called a shopping center, because it was assumed that the adequate parking provided would be part of the attraction of shopping there.

Richard Neutra suggested the construction of open-air car parks in 1940, but the first to open for business was in 1948 in Miami, a Bauhaus-inspired, split-level structure designed by Robert Law Weed. Without the ventilation concerns of previous car parks, as well as lower construction costs, the open-air model soon became the norm for new car parks.

[Page 1045]A later innovation was the development of mechanical garages, such as Speed-Park in New York City. Built in 1961, it provided fully automated parking and retrieval for 270 cars using a system of elevators. Although an automated system could fit more cars into the same amount of space, construction and maintenance costs tend to be higher, and this design is far less common than garages with ramps that allow drivers to get to and from their parking places. Another innovation was the integration of parking into urban residential buildings, such as Chicago's Marina City, a downtown apartment complex constructed in 1962.

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