Following the continuing discussion of cell towers on this list, it's
interesting how we (including me) can cringe at the thought of a cell tower*
in a historic district, but also ignore the free storage of miles and miles
of rusty scrap metal on the same streets - I refer, of course, to the
privilege of overnight street parking.  In New York, the permanent dedication
of 50% of the roadway to car storage was anathema to the city fatherpersons
for more than a century, but finally snuck in in 1950 (another thing to blame
on the 1950's!).

Auto traffic is bad enough, but the effect of permanent car storage on the
streetscape is awful.   Just to show you all I'm not a nut, I attach an
article which ran in The New York Times on this very subject a few years ago.
 I forget who wrote it - he must be dead by now.

Best,  Christopher Gray, FAAA

*Hey, Jim Rhodes - a good Beyer Blinder Belle charrette:  a "contextual" cell
tower!!!  Please post your esquisses.

ARTICLE BEGINS

                  Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company
                               The New York Times

                  March  17, 1996, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

HEADLINE: Streetscapes/Cars; When Streets Were Vehicles for Traffic, Not
Parking

BYLINE:  By  CHRISTOPHER GRAY

  THE New-York Historical Society's "New York Then and Now: The Upper West
Side" is quite different from the usual show of old photographs. Working with
a
collection from the early 20th century, the curator, Dale Neighbors, presents
successive images of Central Park West, Broadway and West End Avenue -- not so
much of their buildings, but of the streets themselves, with matching
current-day pictures by the Society's photographer, Glenn Castellano.

   The 1925 view looking west down the middle of 96th Street from Central Park
West makes a good study. The Elevated Railroad, one block west at Columbus,
brings the eye up to the sense of "room" that even a straight street may
possess
-- without that distant fence, 96th Street is just a tunnel.

    The sidewalks are much wider, making the pedestrian route a real boulevard
rather than a little escape ledge. They are wide enough to have large planted
areas, 10 feet wide and 40 feet long; most of the wide cross streets were
special "Park Streets" under the care of the Department of Parks.

   But to one eye the most significant change is how vehicles use the streets:
In the 1925 view there are only two vehicles parked on a street that now
serves
as a permanent garage for 120. For in the time of our grandparents, New
Yorkers
still considered the streets as built for transportation, not car storage.

   The ban against permanent parking on the city streets extends back at least
to the mid-19th century, and was considered a sacred contract by the time the
automobile arrived in real numbers in the early 1900's.  Search any early
photographs you want -- you may find streets crowded with traffic, but not
with
parked vehicles.

   In the 1920's and 1930's parking was permitted on the city streets for up
to
one hour, and three hours after midnight. Thus just about everyone needed a
garage for overnight parking.

   But automobile owners were beginning to take as a permanent right what was
extended as a temporary privilege: In a letter to The New York Times in 1931,
Albert Schaile, a Manhattan resident, complained that it was getting "almost
impossible to cross the street" because of the parked cars, and that the
situation was getting worse.

   Few defended overnight parking: The police thought long-term parking
encouraged car thieves and permitted loitering places; the Fire Department
complained that hydrants were frequently blocked, and the Department of Health
complained that parked cars made it difficult to keep the streets clean.

   Merchant organizations opposed street parking because it slowed traffic
dramatically.

   According to Robert Schulman, a spokesman, the New York City Department of
Transportation now has "no idea" how many parked cars there are on New York
streets.

   One of the few studies ever done was in 1931, when the Board of Trade, a
merchant group, concluded that habitual overnight parkers, by increasing the
number of cars on city streets, cost city businesses about $1 million a year
in
traffic delays, even while there was plenty of garage space.

   A SURVEY the next year concluded that West Side streets had many cars
illegally parked overnight, with the most, 113, on 87th Street from Central
Park
West to Riverside Drive -- a street that now houses 250 cars.

   The New York Times wrote of the city streets in 1939 that car parkers "have
arrogated its use to themselves at all times in spite of the inconvenience or
danger" to others.

   One problem car owners faced was that garages were not permitted in new
apartment houses; another was that free-standing garages were restricted to
industrial zones, away from residential areas.

   Street parking increased, and in 1947 Police Commissioner Arthur Wallander
stated that it "constitutes one of the gravest problems facing the city"; he
cited overwhelming public sentiment against "the public streets being used as
garages," a phrase he used as an epithet.

   But in the same year the American Automobile Association promoted
legislation
to permit overnight parking, and successfully painted the ban as a
monopolistic
rule by the garage owners -- who were found parking their customers' cars on
the
streets overnight.

   Maybe Commissioner Wallander's gauge of public opinion was faulty, for no
civic or art association took up the cause. Or perhaps there were already so
many temporary day parkers that it didn't seem likely to make a difference.

   Overnight parking was legalized in Manhattan in the summer of 1950, when
alternate-side-of-the-street parking (Sunday, with prohibited hours of 7 A.M.
to
3 P.M., every day but Sunday) became official on the Lower East Side, and soon
spread to most of Manhattan.

   Today, with few exceptions, a stationary row of cars parked overnight on
both
sides of a city street is accepted without remark, whether it's in Greenwich
Village or on the Grand Concourse.

   It is difficult to calculate how New York might have kept its ban. Each
city
block would now require its own garage to replace the 150-odd spaces it offers
-- unless the number of cars declined.
    It is interesting to look at the New-York Historical Society's
photographs,
on exhibit through May 19, and ponder just how different the city was -- and
might be.

GRAPHIC: Photos: View of 96th Street from Central Park West in 1925 with
Columbus Avenue's Elevated Railroad a block off. Just two vehicles are parked
on
street. Only delivery vehicles are evident in view looking north from 72d on
Broadway in 1900. (Photographs from the New-York Historical Society)