Downtown Parking Lot Maps

[photoLith]

Heres something cool, google Earth has historic imagery, heres downtown Houston from 1944.




Now

[Cirrus]

^
Wow. The highways were so damaging. Also interesting how the center of mass seems to have shifted west a couple of blocks.

Is that train station still there?

[Gordo]

^I was thinking that the train station appears exactly where Minute Maid Park is now from the pictures, and a quick Wikipedia search confirms it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minute_Maid_Park

The largest entrance to the park is inside what was once Houston's Union Station, and the left-field side of the stadium features a train as homage to the site's history. The train moves along a track on top of the length of the exterior wall beyond left field whenever an Astros player hits a home run, or when the Astros win a game. The engine's tender, traditionally used to carry coal, is filled with giant oranges in tribute to Minute Maid's most famous product, orange juice.

[J. Will]

Originally Posted by BG918

The problem that many cities experienced in the 60's and 70's, especially oil boom towns like Tulsa, Denver, Houston and Dallas, was that shorter buildings came down to make way for 50 story towers.

The same thing happened in Canada, but in major Canadian cities almost all of the major office towers built from the 1960s onward had underground parking garages instead of surface lots or above-ground garages. In many cases it's multiple towers sharing a huge underground garage whose footprint spans all the towers and the spaces in-between, in such case it doesn't need to be as many levels deep.

Cities like Houston, Dallas, etc. should have built underground garages beneath each tower instead of surface parking lots or unsightly, space-wasting above-ground garages.

[photoLith]

^
Houston cant really build underground too deep though, the water table is super high here as theres no bedrock within like 10,000 feet as most of the land is aluvial sediments deposited in the last 200,000 years or so. The water table is anywhere from 5-30ft below grade and therefor, underground parking would be subject to flooding a lot. But, that doesnt mean parking garages have to be barren looking cement structures. MainPlace, a new tower downtown just built a new parking garage and integrated it into the building. You cant hardly even tell its a parking garage as its incased in the same glass as the main tower. If developers cared they could easily disguise parking garages. Sure it would cost a little more, but the long term benefits would positively impact downtown, instead of negatively by marring the streetscape.

[photoLith]

To show how much progress some cities have made though in the past 10 years.
This is in the arts district in downtown Dallas


2001


2011

[dgreen]

So Dallas built on the green space and left the parking lots?

[photoLith]

Those green lots were mostly overgrown vacant lots with no trees and were ugly.

[vid]

If you switch between the two, it's pretty clear that quite a few parking lots were replaced with buildings.

[hammersklavier]

Here's one I did of Center City Philadelphia (Vine to South, Delaware to Schuylkill). Green has active proposals; red does not.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by photolitherland

Chicago has tons and tons of parking lots just west of downtown and south. I'll do that one later but it will take a while.

Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280

Yes, but the loop is nearly devoid of them now, it would be interesting to do a before and after the boom parking lots map.

Here's a stab at doing Chicago between Halsted, Chicago Ave, Roosevelt Rd and the lake - approximately 4 square miles of the central area including parts of the lake. I included a few undeveloped, empty lots that aren't used for parking, but didn't generally include parking garages. I know for a fact that a few of the lots have imminent plans for development, but I didn't take the time to give them a different color or anything. Also, I did include accessory lots that serve same-site buildings (for example, the parking lot for the big McDonalds at Clark and Ontario), even though they are less likely to be redeveloped, and generally a bit less offensive because they have a dedicated purpose. I also included the lot built over the Kennedy, despite the fact that wouldn't really be a candidate for anything else.

I agree that a map with the same sort of markers from 1998 would be interesting - there'd be FAR more (and larger) marks between the River and Chicago Ave, for example.


chicago by emathias, on Flickr

[Bailey]

This aerial of Houston from the 40's really does tell the story and disprove the myth that sunbelt cities were all created as BLANK SLATES around the automobile. Not True. Houston was settled in the 1830's....way before the auto. Look closely how every block is developed from the city center...... OUT. Charming turn of the century Victorian neighborhoods were located within walking distance of the CBD. You can clearly see them in this aerial (some have been preserved in downtown or moved)



Houston actually used to have a really strong urban core that cradled the bayou with walkable streets and retail much like the East Coast Cities that it was initially modeled after. That train station welcomed 13 rail lines including a commuter line that resident "downtowners" would take for an afternoon at the beach in Galveston. Beside that, there was an extensive street car line that connected downtown with the "street car suburbs" of the Houston Heights, and Montrose a few miles away. Old photos show that the street car system connected almost all of the cbd streets.

Unfortunately Mayor Holcombe thought it would be a good idea to go after every federal grant that DC was offering for freeway construction. Having won those, the city would watch as subsequent construction would destroy and divide the city into what it would look like today.

As the city grew, the residential component of downtown was purchased and demoed amongst the land speculation boom in the 60's on. The neighborhoods never had a fighting chance. Either they were destroyed by the freeways or purchased for speculation.

That photo floating around is that end result of that clearing of southeast residential downtown as squatters replaced those neighborhoods with surface parking. That photo has to be taken in the mid to late 1970's.

We are a good 70+ years from this aerial and we are trying to get an urban core and a transit system as strong as we had in place in the first quarter of the 1900's, before the widespread use of the automobile.

[photoLith]

What happened to Houston is tragic. Most of the inner city hoods today that are in that 1944 photo are either totally destroyed or greatly altered. Hardly any of the oldest neighborhoods survive intact today. The most dense area on that map, besides downtown, is Freemans Town, or Freedmans Town just southwest of downtown. It was Houstons original black neighborhood. Today, only a dozen or so houses from that area remain as Id say 99% of it was torn down and now replaced by tin sided apartments and suburban style apartments. The only hood that predates the 20s and 30s that still has some older houses in it would be The Heights, and even then, much of its history was lost also. I want to buy a billboard in Houston and post those two photos next to each, the then and now, and have it say, See What Was Lost? Most people have no clue or just dont care and it breaks my heart.

[JDRCRASH]

If only the 45 through downtown was a tunnel. Gosh that would be such an enormous improvement.

Imagine, one huge central core from the 59 to the 10 encompassing midtown and downtown.

[s.p.hansen]

A Map of Salt Lake City Surface Parking:

I forgot to include vacant lots (just peer near the freeway and railroad tracks for that).

[J. Will]

Judging from aerials, two of the world's worst offenders have to be Jacksonville, Fl, and Anchorage, Alaska. I started one for Jacksonville, but still have a ways to go.

[Cirrus]

Old pictures of Denver, Dallas, Atlanta... they'd all look pretty much just like the Houston image. The only cities that have really been blank slates since the auto era are in the southwest, like Phoenix and Las Vegas.

That said, they were never all that much like east coast cities, because the transition from downtown to residential neighborhood went immediately to bungalows, lacking the belt of rowhouses found in all east coast cities. The urban midwest would be a better comparison.

[Bailey]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Old pictures of Denver, Dallas, Atlanta... they'd all look pretty much just like the Houston image. The only cities that have really been blank slates since the auto era are in the southwest, like Phoenix and Las Vegas.

That said, they were never all that much like east coast cities, because the transition from downtown to residential neighborhood went immediately to bungalows, lacking the belt of rowhouses found in all east coast cities. The urban midwest would be a better comparison.

True, while we didn't have the rows of townhomes or brownstones but we did have a few low rise residential buildings at that time. Houston HAD a great start at an infrastructure, a vibrant downtown complete with resturants, retail, office, and residential, extensive street car system, and a commuter system. It even had small remants of cutral districts like Little Germany. (Does anyone have photos of downtown Houston in the first half of the 1900's?) I know that when the Foley's opened in the 40's or 50's it was a huge deal for downtown and a testament to the retail presence.

The city leaders made teh decision to tear down the infrastructure, and then developers decided to located retail underground, away form the historical center.

[Shasta]

Originally Posted by photolitherland

What happened to Houston is tragic. Most of the inner city hoods today that are in that 1944 photo are either totally destroyed or greatly altered. Hardly any of the oldest neighborhoods survive intact today. The most dense area on that map, besides downtown, is Freemans Town, or Freedmans Town just southwest of downtown. It was Houstons original black neighborhood. Today, only a dozen or so houses from that area remain as Id say 99% of it was torn down and now replaced by tin sided apartments and suburban style apartments. The only hood that predates the 20s and 30s that still has some older houses in it would be The Heights, and even then, much of its history was lost also. I want to buy a billboard in Houston and post those two photos next to each, the then and now, and have it say, See What Was Lost? Most people have no clue or just dont care and it breaks my heart.

I usually agree with you, but you have no idea of what you are talking about. There are 1920s and 1930s houses remaining in the Third Ward, Fifth Ward, Washington Terrace, Old Sixth Ward, Riverside Terrace, Boulevard Oaks, Montrose, Southampton, Old Braeswood, the Museum District, River Oaks, and many more places.

Cities evolve. There was NO WAY that the 4th Ward was going to remain with single story shotgun houses when it stood literally across the street from downtown. And, the 4th Ward had been dying for many decades as affluent blacks left it in favor of the Third Ward, Riverside Terrace, and later for places like Pearland and Missouri City. Honestly, other than the displacement of the poor, I think the new 4th ward is a HUGE improvement with things like Post Midtown Square, the Edge, The Rise, and hundreds of condos and apartments in mutli-story structures standing on lots that used to house small single story homes.

Do you think Boston of today looks like the Boston of 1700?

[photoLith]

^
Yes, many 1930s and 20s houses remain but it has been greatly altered, as in, turned to ghettos. I said not many predating that remain, which is true. But, most of those areas surrounding downtown Houston that have houses from the 20s to 30s are ghettos now and are quickly being torn down as they get gentrified and replaced by those tin sided apartments and such. I can venture to guess that by 2040, at its current pace, the ghettos of today will be mostly torn down and replaced as most of the houses that are still in existence that arent already gentrified, like The Heights, are in such bad shape that they will have to be torn down.

And no, of course the Boston of today is largely nothing like that of the 1700s. But, its much like the Boston of the early 20th century as much of what was in existence back then, still exists today. Which cant be said for Houston. Sure, lots of it was torn down, like the areas just west of downtown Boston and where the Big Dig project was, but the vast majority of the city remains intact. The vast majority of the Houston of the early 20th century no longer remains or is in very bad shape, ie ghettos.