Streetsblog.net

In the earlier days of motoring cities had a good balance of transportation options with most living within walking distance of goods, services and mass transit.  Gas stations, auto dealers and service shops sprang up but they did so in a more restrained way then. Early service stations used massing, design and materials to be compatible with residential neighbors.

840,000 people in St. Louis owned 165,000 automobiles and trucks in 1946. By 1970 it is estimated that there will be about 230,000 automobiles and trucks. This figure does not include streetcars and busses or the many thousands of new cars and trucks in suburban areas, all of which are potential users of city streets. The annual traffic in St. Louis will be increased from 1,531,000,000 to 2,403,000,000 vehicle miles by 1960 (Estimate by Missouri State Highway Department, Highway Planning Survey.). This is a lot of traffic. It cannot be accommodated on our present street system. It will require new and enlarged adequate flow channels as well as a high degree of regulation and control.(source: 1947 Comprehensive Plan for St. Louis)

So the city continued widening streets and requiring more and more parking. We know today the more you accommodate cars the more you will have to accommodate.  From a 2004 St. Louis Federal Reserve report, “The total number of registered vehicles in St. Louis City, St. Louis County and St. Clair County (the most populated areas of the St. Louis metro area) is about 1.4 million.” So clearly the number of registered vehicles has increased dramatically. St. Louis was not alone in this unattainable goal of accommodating the automobile, take Hartford CT as an example:

For the past half-century, city leaders in Hartford have worked hard to satisfy what they deemed to be a critical need - the need for more parking, so that downtown Hartford could compete with suburban office parks and shopping centers.

This summer the Center for Transportation and Urban Planning at the University of Connecticut conducted a detailed study of the cumulative effect on the city of 50 years of providing parking. What we found was startling: Since 1960, the number of parking spaces in downtown Hartford increased by more that 300 percent - from 15,000 to 46,000 spaces. This change has had a profound and devastating effect on the structure and function of the city as one historic building after another was demolished.

And what did the city gain from this assiduous drive to provide sufficient parking? Was it able to grow more prosperous by providing more jobs and housing for more people? If this was the desired outcome, we can consider the past 50 years to have been an abysmal failure. Over the period that parking was being increased by more than 300 percent, downtown was losing more than 60 percent of its residential population, and the city as a whole lost 40,000 people and 7,000 jobs.

Yet the perception of Hartford as a city perennially short of parking and in need of more parking has never slackened. How could this be?

Well, the simple answer is that parking and transportation policy in Hartford has had the perverse effect of inducing an unending cycle of more demand for parking. Like a dog chasing its tail, the city is constantly playing catch-up - the more parking provided, the more parking is needed.  (full story: Hartford: It’s A Parking Place)

I believe cities could have achieved a better balance by accepting the car as a given but not go hog wild to make driving so easy to drive everywhere. A look at architecture from the early 20th century gives us a guide for achieving this balance in the 21st century.

The first step is to build quality buildings that outlive their original use. Even auto dealerships need not be acres and acres of cars.

The above is about 6-8 blocks West of the Packard dealership.   This was St. Louis’ auto row back in the day.  The building on the left is now the popular restaurant The Fountain on Locust:

Our building was constructed in 1916 as the showroom for the Stutz Blackhawk and the Stutz Bearcat, both considered top of the line, high performance sports sedans of the time.

In later decades auto row moved to South Kingshighway. The scale was different than on Locust but the automobile didn’t overpower the people.

Above this service center, likely an early dealership, is adjacent to an apartment building with street-level retail.  Balance.

Further down the street we see (below) an auto service building nestled between a single family house (left) and a two-family (right).

Is it ideal? Far from it but I bet most that drive by don’t notice it.

Auto dealerships weren’t confined to Locust and Kingshighway.  Other major thoroughfares such as Natural Bridge and Gravois also had dealerships:

The buff brick building with the street trees in front was an auto dealership for decades.  The late Dave Mungenast got his start working at a motorcycle dealer on Locust while he was a student at Saint Louis University.  He operated a Toyota dealership in this building from 1966-1975.    Today it houses the Dave Mungenast’s Classic Motorcycles Museum.

Mini of St. Louis (above) at Maryland & Gay (map) in Clayton is the only current example I can think of where the dealership doesn’t overpower the neighbors.

The once charming service station has grown over the decades to become the now ubiquitous gas station that is seen everywhere:

Of course along with the above we have an increasing string of former gas stations that have little use beyond used car dealership.

So much in our cities has grown bigger but not better.  The old buildings and sites are disposable.

- Steve Patterson