Woody Grab Bag #007

Welcome to the Grab Bag, the every-three-weeks-or-so history mish-mash made with loving care for the Friends of Woody.

Friends of Woody had fun at our Lone Mountain cemetery walk last Saturday:

Friends will be able to get my printed San Francisco Story Annual next month (cover art, I think I can announce now, will be by the great Paul Madonna). And they will get membership cards designed by artist Christine Innes. And they get to read the rest of this Grab Bag... What lucky, privileged people. Now let's get to the meat and potatoes, a little essay I call:

Where can I park?

City leaders are trying to figure out how to get people back downtown. The pandemic emptied out the office towers, which starved the delis, clothing stores, barbershops, and cafes that depended on the daily commuters. With no downtown workers, the boutiques and department stores from the Embarcadero to Union Square are barely getting by. The tourists aren’t helping yet: visitor spending is down 70% from 2019. Concerts, street festivals, and new outdoor dining options are all being suggested to lure the locals who have no other reason to wander the shady canyons of skyscrapers and old bank buildings around Montgomery Street.

A century ago the city’s strategy for the continuing health of San Francisco’s downtown and shopping districts was all about making it easier to drive. The rise of the personal automobile created a demand for parking spaces, which were quickly seen as key to downtown’s economic survival.

I mentioned in the San Francisco Story sent out a couple of weeks ago the fanfare given the 450 Sutter Street tower in 1929. While the design, the modern amenities, and the tenant specialization of Timothy Pflueger’s medical building were all heralded, most of the hoopla focused on its 1,000-car garage.

In the 19th century, a San Francisco neighborhood could not thrive without a streetcar line to get people to their jobs downtown. But the rise of the automobile had some 80,000 cars driving into downtown by the early 1920s. Traffic and congestion on downtown streets became an increasing problem.

When the employees of the Municipal Railway went on strike in 1946, even more people had to give the personal commute a try and parked on the inactive center tracks of Market Street:

Personal Interjection #1: Because of a lack of income, a parsimonious nature, and an aversion to the many inconveniences of automobile ownership (parking in the city, maintenance, the hassle of having my cassette stereo console stolen), I avoided owning a car for most of my young adulthood. Muni did me fine most of the time. I was truly baffled encountering people who drove everywhere. When I worked at an Internet start-up south of Market Street in 1999, a coworker originally from the Midwest drove everyday from his apartment about twenty blocks away. It so shocked me that I remember his name (Daryl) and nothing else about him.

The 1,000 spots at 450 Sutter Street weren’t enough for the Union Square shoppers. People had become enamored with driving. Later studies claimed a significant majority did not want to walk more than 400 feet from their parking spot to their job or shopping destination. So the city decided that the center of the city’s tourist and retail zone needed its own parking garage, an underground one considered an engineering marvel at the time of its construction in 1941 and 1942.

Los Angeles wanted to get in on the garage-under-park movement and here is rare photographic proof of the city down south acting jealous of us:

The protestors (really downtown business leaders) got their wish, of course, and the one block of greenery in downtown LA was torn up for the garage. (Supposedly, the palm trees that had to be removed were repurposed for Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise ride.) The redesigned Pershing Square over the new garage epitomized 1950s Southern California with a water-sucking lawn and reflecting pools.

Back in San Francisco, the 1,700 spots for cars in the Union Square garage still weren’t enough. Supervisor Chester MacPhee decided in 1947 there was a simple solution to solve downtown’s parking issues once and for all: a $33 million, nine-story-high, five-block-long garage able to hold 15,000 automobiles.

Architect Leonard Mosias’s plan for this South of Market monstrosity from 3rd to 8th Streets was nine times larger than the Union Square garage. Purchasing the land from private owners was the big problem, but this was the heyday of redevelopment schemes and over-reaching condemnation for “blight clearance.”

The city seriously considered this grand temple of the idle auto, which oddly didn’t plan for parking spaces on its roof—that was reserved for possible helicopter pads, and perhaps personal rocket ships.

The Taj Mahal of garages didn’t get built, but two years later, on October 26, 1949, San Francisco created a new municipal agency just about parking. The Parking Authority head was the former manager of the Downtown Association, and naturally saw just one solution to the parking problem—more please!

Using voter-approved bond money, St. Mary’s Square, Civic Center, and Portsmouth Square all got the Union Square treatment, leased to private operators and throwing a little profit back to the city.

More garages went up with redevelopment projects at the Golden Gateway and Japantown, while the 5th and Mission garage was a very much smaller version of MacPhee’s five-block dream. Throw in the Sutter-Stockton garage providing yet more Union Square capacity and 25,000 city parking spaces had been created on city land in little more than a decade.

Also part of the Parking Authority’s work: creating small neighborhood parking lots. Financed by meter money, these through-block open lots came at the urging of local merchants losing business to new shopping malls like Stonestown (surrounded by thousands of parking spaces.) The neighborhood lots were somewhat controversial. Houses had to be purchased by the city to produce only a couple of dozen parking spots per lot.

Personal Interjection #2: One of the small lots created by the city was a frequent stopping point for a friend and me to meet and trade baseball cards in the early 1970s. The built-in seating of the lot on 9th Avenue off Clement Street was conveniently near our school, Star of the Sea, and our weekend destination, the Coliseum Theatre. Later I found out that in demolishing one of the homes on that lot the city discovered it had been made with old transit cars. (See my Carville book for more.)

Previously tucked into skyscrapers, hidden under park lawns, or masqueraded by architects to look like apartment buildings, parking garages started coming out of the closet in the 1950s. Ownership and use of a personal automobile had become a signature aspect of the national identity with the Interstate Highway System and new freeways swooping through old city downtowns. Rather than being subordinate to department stores or office towers, garages took starring roles.

The privately owned Downtown Garage at the corner of Mason and O’Farrell Streets featured a small arcade of shops, but George Applegarth’s design was all about showing off the parking levels.

Such spirally garage designs became a bit of an urban fad in tight downtown lots. I saw a good one while on travels in Pittsburgh last year:

In 1964, San Francisco Parking Authority chief Vining T. Fisher summed up the necessity of his work:

“The courts of the Nation have decreed that off-street parking spaces are necessary for health, safety, and the public welfare. […] Parking is now in the area of public service.”

Fisher also relayed his vision for parking in San Francisco’s future. By 1980, he predicted the need for 100,000 spaces downtown, where freeway off-ramps would feed directly into multi-level garages. Shoppers would have to walk no farther than 600 feet to their destination, using skyscraper-high mechanized garage towers on small (63-100 foot) lots. Parking fees would be charged on credit cards (correct!) with hourly rates costing no more than a local telephone call (maybe not correct).

Personal Interjection #3: Going to Giants day games I often walk from my home in the Richmond District to the ballpark in Mission Bay. (This anecdote is not a recommendation for such a hike—it’s a long way!) On my way to a battle with the Dodgers in the heat of the 2021 race for the National League western division crown, I noticed we had broken the three-digit barrier for parking. A bit more than Vining Fisher’s predicted telephone call price.

I know the $20 ballpark beer is coming. Maybe 2023?

Vining Fisher’s 1964 projections mostly didn’t pan out. The ambitious freeway system stalled in the face of neighborhood opposition and then was cut back after the 1989 earthquake. Mechanized garage skyscrapers didn’t fill up the downtown grid. But he wasn’t far off in his 100,000 spaces prediction. A 2016 survey of off-street parking in the northeast quadrant of the city came up with 87,000 spaces. (A recent census of the Bay Area’s nine counties found parking for 15 million cars, 2.4 spaces for every actual automobile and 1.9 spaces for every human resident.)

But now the city officially doesn’t want people to drive downtown. As part of our Transit First Policy we made it illegal for private automobiles to drive on Market Street east of Van Ness Avenue. Mandatory parking garage requirements are being stripped out of plans for new construction. We want to cut emissions, change our car-centric lifestyles in the face of the climate crisis, and reduce traffic-related accidents and deaths.

The pandemic initially did the job for us. Employees like working from home and companies are reluctant to reopen their offices. We’re all being pushed online for shopping. I recently walked though the Crocker Galleria and of the 40-something retail spaces only three were occupied.

All the same, the city’s garages are beginning to fill up again because those that are returning downtown are making the choice to drive. While Muni’s ridership is half of what it was in 2019, garages have almost returned to pre-pandemic capacity. All of this, of course, is in flux as we recover as a society from the Covid-19 impact, but in most anticipated scenarios Vining T. Fisher’s concrete parking temples will outlive many of the glamorous department stores and office towers surrounding them.

Vote on My Face

I'll see you next Wednesday with another San Francisco Story. Meanwhile, what do you think about the (gray) facial hair? Do I look distinguished or haggard? My wife is on the fence.