Parking jalopies in a tall stack

There's no additional info for this photo, so I'm not sure how this bizarre car-parking lift worked back in the glory days of running boards, but I'd sure love to see it in motion!

Vintage Vertical Parking

• [Fuzzyfreaker]

  If I recall, this was in Chicago. Clark Street, if I remember correctly.

  • [Willem Oosterhof]

    Read my comment. It’s not in Clark street.

• [Joseph Francis]

  Bruce Wayne kept his cars like that.

• [Joseph Francis]

  TinEye found a nice big version

  http://svalko.org/data/2009_08_11_17_49_feels_ru_video_new_pics_1_210_430.jpg

• [Donald Petersen]

  Amazingly clever and ambitious idea!  I wonder how often it broke down, stranding commuters with no ride home.

  I’d love to keep my fleet in a big vending machine like that.  These days, alas, my fleet is only four cars tall.  And half of those belong to my wife, and one of those is for sale.

• [Gene Cowan]

  Judging from the look-alikes there, I’d say that they didn’t bother rotating it to find your car when you returned. They probably just gave you the next one in the stack.

• [Teller]

  It’s how they used to dry clean flivvers.

• [franko]

  you can see a later incarnation of this type of parking garage in action in the movie “5 against the house” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Against_the_House — it sure would cut down on car theft, and is quite an efficient use of space.

• [Eric Harley]

  Here’s a film reel http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=9055

• [Valerie]

  I remember a scene in the Louis Malle film Atlantic City that involved a parking system like that.

• [TokyoSpark]

  These kind of vertical carousel garages are quite common in space-limited Japan. I’ve even used one that turns the car around somehow so you don’t have to back out.

  • [Michael Smith]

    These kind of vertical carousel garages are quite common in space-limited Japan. I’ve even used one that turns the car around somehow so you don’t have to back out.

    Yeah there is at least one in Kuala Lumpur as well. Given the Malaysian practice of buying and improving old, foreign equipment, it might date back to the time of this photo.

• [teapot]

  These are commonplace today in Tokyo where they have parking issues. Some are 10+ stories tall and hold over 70 cars. I believe they load it like a Ferris wheel – putting ‘loads’ on opposite ends of the lift so the mechanism never has to lift more then the weight of 1 car.

  http://www.johnharveyphoto.com/Japan/TokyoStart/CarChangerLg.jpg
  http://www.elevatorbobs-elevator-pics.com/images2/Parking/pk37.jpg
  http://www.elevatorbobs-elevator-pics.com/images2/Parking/pk47.jpg

• [jmsvst]

  Seems like some folks from the Antique Automobile Club of America discussed this picture in 2008.
  http://forums.aaca.org/f170/identity-these-cars-stacked-parking-nyc-254418.html
  The best answer to your question came from Bob Kerr:”Can’t help with the cars, but the vertical rotary parking lot I saw in an old film once. It was in New York City and was an answer to the parking problem they had even that early. The thing is like a vertical carosel. Cars are parked and the next open slot is put on the bottom for the next car. If someone came to get their they had to revolve the machine around till the car they were unloading came back to the bottom. Had to be a mechanical nightmare and expensive to run all day. In the film I saw , it was running! It may have been one of those early Ford films. We saw a whole slew of those in grade school.”

  While I was researching, I ran into this PDF for “Rotopark,” which is to cars that a jukebox is to records. Very BoingBoing indeed:

  http://www.bajulazsa.com/Site/rotopark_files/catalog%20rotopark%201984%232-1.pdf

• [Broan]

  I figured this one out a few months ago. http://chicagoist.com/2011/03/16/the_humpday_flashback_car_elevators.php

• [Broan]

  Oh, well DISQUS doesn’t seem to be working there. “Here we go. This was a Westinghouse Vertical Parking Machine, the first of its kind. It was installed in 1932 on Monroe & Dearborn across from the Majestic Building and stored 48 cars between two units. It lasted until WWII (presumably used for scrap metal)”

  http://books.google.com/books?id=FygDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA24&ots=xnbXGZMS96&dq=westinghouse%20%22vertical%20parking%22&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q&f=false
  http://digital.hagley.org/u?/p268001coll12
  http://books.google.com/books?id=7-EDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA268&dq=westinghouse%20parking%20garage%20popular%20mechanics&pg=PA268#v=onepage&q&f=false

• [penguinchris]

  I’m sure I’ve seen one in person, somewhere in the US – anyone know of any still in operation in the US?

  edit: It’s possible I saw it in Paris

• [rattypilgrim]

  I parked my car in one in Tours, France.

• [Jeffrey Stvan]

  Spot-on, BWChicago! It was at Monroe and Dearborn in Chicago’s Loop (that’s definitely the Majestic Building in the background).

  The September, 1932 issue of Popular Science (p.24) has a nice piece on it. You can view it using Google Books.

• [Jeffrey Stvan]

  Okay. I see now that you already had the PopSci link posted. Apologies for the redundant reference.

• [Scott Ashkenaz]

  I worked in an office building in Tachikawa, Japan that used one of these as its garage. It was great, except that it created vibrations that wreaked havoc with the sensitive semiconductor manufacturing equipment that we operated in the building. We had to make sure that it was not running when we ran tests.

• [mccrum]

  We have some in New York but they  typically run about 6 cars, mostly because otherwise you’re waiting there all day if your car is at the top.

• [planettom]

  Reminds me of some of those old parking garages for Matchbox toy cars:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsrO0hbOT8s

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzEFyJ8tow8

• [Jim Moskowitz]

  Here’s a recent photo of one in NYC today: http://www.flickr.com/photos/18842924@N03/5649632654/
  Another: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arcticpuppy/6149716631/

• [nosehat]

  It would be really funny if this were a vending machine.

• [MadRat]

  There’s a more advance version in Wolfsburg, Germany at the Autostadt.  In that case the garage is silo shaped, 20 stories high and holds 800 cars.

  http://roboticsthenewera.blogspot.com/2011/01/robotic-car-parks

• [veggiespam]

  Not quite as large as the German one above, but here is the Hoboken NJ garage opened in 2005ish.  This one doesn’t use the central axis for lifting cars, but instead a “puzzle of 15″ blank-space motion.  It was repeated many times that this is the first automated parking garage in the US [citation left as exercise to the reader].

  http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/news/2006/08/71554

  Except for the corruption, lawsuits, grifting, payouts, source code theft, and settlements, there have actually been very few mechanical issues.

• [Andreas Beer]

  there’s gotta be a Laurel & Hardy-video for that!

• [Narmitaj]

  It wasn’t exactly a vending machine, but there used to be a Smart car dealer outside Bordeaux (near the airport) with a stack of cars in what looked like some kind of vending box. This looks like the actual place, and was what came up when I googled with Bordeaux in the search terms.

• [Robert Baruch]

  Anyone care to find the exact GPS coordinates the photo was taken from and compare to Street View?

  • [Morkl]

    Someone said this is the place: http://g.co/maps/ncj72

• [LightningRose]

  Based on the above linked British Pathe newsreel, it looks like it’s a pair of Paternoster elevators.

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

• [Colin Macdonald]

  There are at least two of them in Honolulu (http://g.co/maps/5qev2 and http://g.co/maps/z3mh6) although I think only the second one, an enclosed unit, is still functioning.

• [Diorama Sky]

  The location of the garage (33 W. Monroe St.) as it is today: http://g.co/maps/sfpa2

  The corner of the Majestic Building that can be seen in the background of the original photo: http://g.co/maps/szzz9

• [Nathan Hornby]

  They must exist in New York, cause I’ve seen them in GTA IV…

• [Willem Oosterhof]

  The building in the background kind of looks like the Jewelers building at 35 East Wacker, and it did have a car elevator, but I’m surprised they’d guess Wacker drive, when the street has only the river on the other side. The elevator wouldn’t be on Wabash either since those buildings have been around for awhile leaving no vacant lot for this structure.The location is actually 33 West Monroe. The building across the street still exists and is the BofA theater and a Hampton Inn. 33 West Monroe has a completion date of 1980 (not sure if accurate). Something tells me this elevator was out of service and dismantled long before the 1970′s
  http://maps.google.com/maps?q=33+West+Monroe+Street,+Loop&hl=en&ll=41.880753,-87.628798&spn=0.007157,0.015321&sll=41.880753,-87.628798&sspn=0.007189,0.015321&vpsrc=0&hnear=33+W+Monroe+St,+Chicago,+Cook,+Illinois+60603&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=41.88075,-87.628798&panoid=px9VtZg9YBMaOyNEKp3TpQ&cbp=11,144.91,,0,-7.37

  Credits where credits are due, this comment was from user Wolverine in the detroityes blog.
  From
  http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?11563-Is-this-in-Detroit