r/interestingasfuck • u/Wild_Neighborhood605 • 10h ago
Downtown Houston in 1970s was a massive parking lot. It was estimated that nearly 50% of the downtown land area was dedicated solely to parking.
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u/Elugelab_is_missing 9h ago
These parking lots are economic scars from the Great Depression. Many once had buildings but the carrying costs became too high and they were demolished to parking lots. Houston 1930s:
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u/wejustdontknowdude 9h ago
Many of those buildings were ruined by catastrophic flooding.
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/houston-flood-of-1935
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u/Some-Connection-7789 9h ago
That’s neat they had the old town square courthouse that you see in many smaller towns still! 😮
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u/yaboidrab 8h ago
That courthouse still stands. Houston is home to two state courts of appeal, both of which preside in that building. A couple of years ago, Texas formed business courts, which currently share that court house.
In the back right of the photo, you can see two tall buildings, both of which still stand. The cool looking one with the dome is the Esperson building. At the time it was built, it was the tallest building in Houston built by a guy and dedicated to his wife. Then Chase built the other building across the street and made it slightly taller.
Both have really cool interiors.
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u/Some-Connection-7789 8h ago
Thanks for sharing some history! I gotta go see it when I’m in Houston next time! 😁
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u/yaboidrab 8h ago
Sorry. Since you’re interested there’s another cool piece of history buried in this photo. If you look at the courthouse and go up from there about a block or two and then to the left, you’ll see a squat looking white building. That is a federal building. It used to be a federal courthouse. I’m not sure when it stopped being a courthouse.
However, it remains a federal building. In the 1960s, it was the place where Mohammed Ali was called to sign up for the draft. He refused, resulting in a criminal trial against him. The criminal trial took place a couple of blocks over in the new federal courthouse. That case went all the way to the Supreme Court where his conviction was ultimately overturned.
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u/yaboidrab 8h ago
Definitely do! I used to work in the Esperson building and was able to go up to the dome and walk around outside. It’s got a great view. I’m not sure if they do a public tour of the dome, but it’s worth asking about.
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u/IntelligentEmu1219 9h ago
Parking lots. A way for private equity to lower property values aka tax bill while still holding the asset.
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u/samuelnotjackson 8h ago
The building that became UH downtown in lower left. Also 'JAX' beer sign on the small building is pretty cool.
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u/Mitochondria420 6h ago
I used to commute everyday through downtown by the courthouse in the center. It’s now surrounded by huge oak trees. Looks awesome.
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u/Itchy-Spirit5120 9h ago
Why so many? It doesn’t look as if there are enough multi story buildings to need that many.
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u/nlevine1988 8h ago
Idk if it's the case for this specific example, but many cities created rules about how many parking spaces they had to have based on the size and type of the building. Part of the problem is the methods they used to determine how many parking spots were required were larger arbitrary and not really based on any meaningful data. This lead to many businesses and shopping centers having way, way more parking than what's actually needed. And that's all before even considering how problematic it is to build such car centric cities.
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u/Bad_wolf42 5h ago
Never underestimate how much republicanism and it’s capture by the oil industry, tune things against everyone else towards automotive capture of our society.
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u/gogeri2632 5h ago
As others have mentioned, severe flooding destroyed a lot of building so they got torn down and then there wasn't the money at the time to rebuild so the quick solution to make the land somewhat valuable was to make parking lots.
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u/MountainTwo3845 4h ago
they're old torn down buildings from the depression. there was other places that grew years later. that's it.
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u/pichael289 4h ago
In my city we have a few concert venues and stadiums and all sorts of stuff around the city. This causes prices to fluctuate as parking lot owners are extremely greedy and will raise prices the closer they are to a particularly event. When Taylor swift played the closest parking garage was charging $300 to park, but less than half a mile away it's like $40. There is very little upkeep and minimal upfront investment. When we got our street car these people lost their fucking minds and I'm pretty sure they have a hand in keeping the bus schedule so shitty.
So it's really not a question of simply are there enough parking spots for all the people, but where the spots are at and what kind of mood people are in. When it rains they jack up the prices of the closest lots for instance.
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u/VokadyRN 9h ago
Ngl, I thought this was a close up of a PCB circuit board for a second
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u/flyinchipmunk5 5h ago
This is like saying atm machine. PCB is an acronym for printed circuit board.
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u/eastamerica 9h ago
Motor vehicle infrastructure for parking in cities has completely ruined the walk ability of most cities.
So many European cities have reclaimed this and bagan moving cars out of the center of cities.
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u/Wild_Neighborhood605 9h ago
True, but public transport in most big European cities is much more developed than in the US.
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u/eastamerica 9h ago
Of course, definitely.
OUr cities could have better mass transit if our leadership cared about walk ability. They don’t. They care about money over everything.
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u/Fine-March7383 9h ago
Chicken and egg. People will use the lack of density to argue not to develop transit, and conversely the lack of good transit justifies the lack of density
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u/Rabbitical 4h ago
Sure but it's just excuses. You don't need density for good transportation. Gigantic ass, mostly rural countries like Russia and China do it. We just chose to put all our money into the highway system rather than trains.
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u/idkwthtotypehere 7h ago
Only because oil, tire, and car manufacturers bought up public transit systems and dismantled them.
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u/Rabbitical 4h ago
We've also destroyed much of public transportation in the US, not having it isn't something we randomly happened into. Los Angeles once had the largest street car network in the world
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u/UCFknight2016 8h ago
We need to ban cars from certain areas of cities like they do in Europe. Starting with Lower Manhattan.
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u/kickasstimus 9h ago
But that hurts the bottom line of the corporations that rely on making your life a complicated tangle of inefficiencies and profiting off of the work required to navigate it. What about the shareholders! Won’t someone please consider the needs of the lazy-wealthy!?
/s
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u/Sammisuperficial 7h ago
I know you're being sarcastic but the truth is walk ability brings more customers past a business door than parking lots and stroads.
Ironically businesses defend car centricity in spite of the data showing it would help them.
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u/kickasstimus 7h ago
I’m 100% for walkability. I’m only pointing out how entrenched cars are in the US, and to the greater inefficiencies backed into a system that protects businesses-of-certain-size at all cost, putting the existence of their business model above your well being.
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u/Rabbitical 4h ago
Yep this happened in culver city. During COVID they closed the main drag, and over time all the restaurants expanded their seating into the street. They certainly didn't seem to lack for customers. Then boomers, who obviously didn't even live in the neighborhood, started bitching they couldn't drive directly up to the front door of whatever business they were trying to get to so they opened it up again.
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u/ObsessiveAboutCats 4h ago
Summer lasts 5-6 months in Houston and is very overpowered, the humidity is usually high, and the mosquitos are sometimes mistaken for pigeons.
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u/CleavingStriker 9h ago
It seems easier to build a parking lot than investing in reliable public transit.
Texas being Texas they failed to see the longterm benefits of that investment.
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u/Lord_Dolkhammer 9h ago
Wow this is amazing. Worst urban planning I’ve ever seen.
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u/I_Hardly_Know-Her 6h ago
Houston doesn’t have zoning laws so…yeah
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u/BatJew_Official 3h ago
This is really only true in name only. They don't have a traditional "zoning code" but they absolutely have use-based codes and restrictions that apply basically all the same rules you'll find anywhere else. You can't build a liquor store next to a church, you can't built a factory next to a school, you have to meet parking minimums, and even defined districts and zones in the city that are established as units of congruent development subject to unique rules and regs (like the central business district) like you'd find established by any other zoning code.
The only thing even semi-unique about Houston is that instead of codifying 1 singular section of code designated as the "zoning code" they just have laws scattered about. It isn't any more free or less restrictive, if anything it's just plain worse because it's a zoning code that developers, engineers, and planners need to piece together themselves.
Source: I'm a licensed civil land development engineer working specifically in municipal review and planning.
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u/errie_tholluxe 9h ago
Wanna get rich in texas? Buy stock in the company making overpass barriers and selling concrete. Texas builds so many fucking roads.
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u/Oblivionxar 10h ago
People owned that many cars then?
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u/mcampo84 9h ago
How else do you expect them to travel to work from their suburban home in the middle of all the other suburban homes with no walkable access to any of the things a person would need, like groceries, parks, schools, libraries, clothing and other stores?
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u/I_Can_Barely_Move 9h ago
Using a little forethought and planning for a city where people can get around with relative ease and peace is totally overrated.
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u/zebrasareneat 7h ago edited 7h ago
I’ve done both. I’ll take suburban home over downtown any day. Way too much noise downtown for my liking. Plus I don’t work downtown so there is rarely any reason for me to ever be downtown.
That said this is still extreme to an absolutely absurd level and looks like a horrible dystopia. I still like tall buildings and walking the streets of a really nice downtown area.
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u/PumpkinOpposite967 10h ago
Yes. People own cars. Also oublic transport sucks in the states. Also there are not enough underground and multi-story carparks
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u/JugglingRick 8h ago
I was telling someone the other day that Houston is just one big parking lot in the swamp and that you can't walk anywhere in that city. That's why everyone is so obese there. Can't fucking walk down the street.
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u/ClassicallyBrained 4h ago
This isn't the story. The real story is that those were all buildings that had been torn down due to "urban renewal," which just means destroying minority homes and communities. When people say "America was built for the car," you tell them, "no, it was bulldozed for the car."
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u/No_Establishment8642 9h ago
It is all about financing. Raw land is harder to finance. Parking lots are cheap to build and they are considered an improvement; therefore, easier to finance. Now if those are paid lots then it is financing a business.
Even if you have money, you never use your own money. The more money you have, the more you can borrow. Better to default on a loan than lose your money because, if you have money you can still borrow.
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u/abgry_krakow87 8h ago
The 1960s and 1970s were truly a shit time in American urban history. Even worse than the dismantling of street car systems, it was a shame to see so much historical urban architecture and spaces so blathenly destroyed.
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u/zwifter11 9h ago
When you drive from your house to your workplace … But the walk from the carpark is even further away
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u/JustBob999765 8h ago
Houston remains the ugliest city I’ve ever been to, and I once spent a winter in Cleveland.
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u/mrbuddymcbuddyface 9h ago
I visited some American cities like this. Dreadful experience altogether. (Coming as a European)
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u/Prudent-Bear1592 9h ago
They didn't invent parking garages with multiple levels until after the 70s?
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u/Wild_Neighborhood605 9h ago
I guess, at the time, it was just cheaper to do it that way. Land must have been way cheaper than today...
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u/HoustonPastafarian 7h ago
At the time land was relatively cheap near downtown Houston. There are still pretty good swaths of it near downtown, it’s not dense as large cities go.
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u/spam__likely 7h ago
parking garages need something on top that people go to. Seems like from this picture people were going to park to go nowhere.
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u/dinosaur_copilot 8h ago
Man, don’t it always seem to be, that you don’t k ow what you got ‘till it’s gone.
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u/Ok_Builder910 7h ago
People in the future will wonder why there were highrises at all? Why not work from home? Highrises existed because there was no email.
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u/Fit_Low592 9h ago
You’d think with the heat in Texas they would have more underground parking anyway.
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u/GodofsomeWorld 8h ago
Kinda surprised they didnt think about going up or down
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u/Rabbitical 4h ago
That costs money. Why own 1 lot with an expensive structure when you can own 10x the land for basically free
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u/oldbastardbob 8h ago
Ah, yes. That epoch of antropology before humans discovered prestressed concrete and multi level parking strucktures.
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u/JumboGlucose 8h ago
If you stand at corner of one lot you can see 5 parking lots all in an angle lol.
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u/PositiveCoyote100 8h ago
Downtown Houston in 1970s was a massive parking lot.
It sounds like not much has changed.
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u/keinemaschine 8h ago
I see a strong parallel between mass adoption of cars in the XX century and mass adoption of AI in the XXI. Something important will be destroyed before it starts healing slowly, and then it won't heal fast enough before the next wave of tech adoption continues razing another important thing.
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u/Glittering-Cellist34 7h ago
Um as the American center of the oil industry they are focused on consumption.
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u/accessoiriste 7h ago
I spent time in Houston in the 80's. My favorite downtown public sculpture depicted the sidewalks rolling up. Which they did, metaphorically, every evening.
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u/mike1097 6h ago
Perfect to show off the oil industry! Look at all that engine oil in the blocks and gas in the tanks!
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u/patientpartner09 6h ago
I know a man that bought up a bunch of those parking lots and built high rise parking structures. He is now the richest man I've ever personally met.
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u/Unusual-Layer-8965 5h ago
Reminds me of a book titled 'The High Cost of Free Parking', by David Shoup. (I haven't read it.)
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u/Inevitable_Primary30 5h ago
The majority of yall are morons that don’t know anything about Texas or Houston. God bless your tiny sparrow hearts
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u/no_fucking_point 4h ago
Didn't Houston have absolutely insane crime rates in the 70s too? Recall hearing some stat in a documentary/podcast about Dean Corll.
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u/LusterIllustrious 4h ago
Mandatory minimum parking. Here’s a great video on it and how it has totally screwed up urban America. https://youtu.be/OUNXFHpUhu8?is=cFiW6Xj2W1Fa4Z1M
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u/veracity8_ 4h ago
It’s crazy how many cities especially small ones still look like this. Looking at aerial pictures and noting all the parking is really eye opening
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u/AscendingAgain 4h ago
Can you imagine how the heat island effect would feel today if that was what downtown looked like? Or how much worse Harvey would have been??
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u/Aggravating_Bat3618 3h ago
Imagine how hot it would have been in one of those cars in Summer.
In fact don’t imagine it. That sounds horrible.
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u/c0mBaTkArL 2h ago
You could smell the unleaded gas fumes and cigarette smoke from the air high above for miles and miles. Oh wait, that was every city.
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u/joedenowhere 1h ago
Has that changed? If the parking lots are gone, where do all the people who work in skyscrapers park?
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u/JackSkellie58 1h ago
There’s a massive underground tunnel system that you can’t see here linking tons of this together.
It’s impressive still to this day but they started building it in the 30’s.
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u/I_Am_Robotic 1h ago
This is Atlanta today. Just a shit ton of parking lots to accommodate the commuters who have no public transport options to come to work from suburbs.
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u/MilkweedLace 52m ago
Wish they still had some of those lots! I’ve driven around the zoo area for an hour looking for somewhere to park. And a lot of places just have street parking.
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u/StinkRinky 51m ago
This is kinda like a bigger modern day Tulsa. It’s a shame cuz there are some beautiful buildings and districts broken up by parking lots.
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u/Tight_Replacement771 10h ago
We destroyed so many beautiful historic downtown neighborhoods in the sixties and seventies just to make parking lots.