Text by Patrick Bell.
For today’s gallery we are going to tour some more parking lots. It is always interesting to see the variety in the lots of yore. For time and space purposes, I will not attempt to ID all of them, so let the tour begin!
Our first stop is at the General Store in Yellowstone National Park in 1958. It is a somewhat typical looking parking lot from the late fifties. I counted 35 cars that I could ID. Of those I see no trucks or foreign cars, and no independent marques as well. The overall winner, numbers wise, was the ’57 Chevrolet with five present. The first three are the only ones with visible license plates, a white ’56 Buick Special 4 door Riviera from Texas, black over yellow ’57 Ford Fairlane 500 Town Sedan with a bug shield and a plate I can’t read, and a black over blue ’53 Mercury Monterey Special Custom 4 door sedan probably from California. It also has a roof rack along with two others. What does surprise me a little is there were only five station wagons in the bunch. A white over blue ’57 Chevrolet, tan over white ’57 Ford, two blue ’52-’54 Fords, and a white over black ’56 Dodge.
A quick search does not give me any results I can confirm location wise, but it was a late winter day with some of the snow berm still left. In the foreground is a ’52 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Holiday Coupe with no hub caps or wheel covers, ’49 Studebaker Champion Regal De Luxe 4 door sedan, ’55 Dodge Coronet or Royal Lancer, and perhaps another ’49 Studebaker, this one a Commander 4 door sedan in black. In the distant background are two Cadillacs.
We are now at the Quinn-Menhaden Fisheries plant on Hwy. 87 between Port Arthur and Sabine Pass, Texas. The time period is the late fifties or possibly the very early sixties. The black license plate were Texas from either ’58 or ’60. Two cars have out of state plates that I can’t ID; the white over purplish ’56 Pontiac 860 or 870 4 door Catalina, and the blue over white ’55 Mercury Monterey Coupe.
Otherwise I am going to stick with the trucks. In the foreground a battered ’56 Ford F-100 with a six cylinder, left background a ’55-’59 GMC, and in the center background a ’57-’60 Ford F-100 with a home made canopy. I am not sure what the bright red object is, perhaps a fuel pump. There is also a red pipe sticking out of the ground that may be related.
This one looks like somewhere in California in the spring with the flowers blooming. From the left a black ’53 Chrysler Windsor Six Passenger Sedan, off white ’55 Oldsmobile 88 Holiday Coupe, green over grey ’52 Buick Special 4 door Tourback Sedan, not sure what that is next, perhaps a Jeep with a custom body, and a white over green ’54 Oldsmobile 88 Holiday Coupe. In the right lower corner is a ’56 Ford Custom Ranch Wagon.
Now we are somewhere in Rhode Island at an A & P Grand Opening. The license plates were ’57 issue with the ’58 tabs in the right upper corner. Starting on the left edge a ’51 or ’52 Buick, three Fords, a ’53 wagon, ’53 Tudor Sedan, ’55 Country Sedan, ’57 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe Hardtop, and a White 3000 cabover with a refrigerated box.
Let’s head to St. Louis, where we find another parking lot where Ford product coupes tried to appear like they were the majority. From the left a white over green ’53 Crestline Victoria with a V8, a sharp white ’57 Fairlane 500 Club Victoria, blue over white ’56 Mercury Custom Coupe, and a white over rose ’55 Fairlane Victoria.
I don’t have a location on this one as I can’t read the license plates, but there was a line up heavy in Mopars and Buicks. From the left a white over blue ’57 Dodge 4 door sedan, black over grey ’53 Plymouth Cranbrook 4 door sedan, blue over white ’55 Buick Special or Century 2 door Riviera, white ’59 Plymouth Sport Suburban wagon, two ’57 Buick’s, turquoise and white, and a Studebaker pickup perhaps of the ’57-’59 variety. In the lower right corner is a ’59 Buick.
Another unknown location but what a nice view. The license plates have the color of ’59 Colorado but I can’t be certain. In the foreground a ’55 Pontiac Star Chief Custom 4 door sedan, and in the background a ’57 Dodge Sierra or Custom Sierra wagon.
There are four wagons in this group in a parking lot that overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The first one is just on the other side of the six cylinder powered ’55 Chevrolet Two-Ten 4 door sedan in the foreground. It is white over black and not enough showing to ID. Further down is a tan over white ’57 Ford Country Sedan, blue ’58 or ’59 Rambler, and around to the right is a white over red ’57 Chevrolet Bel Air.
Here we are watching the boats in San Diego with a nice variety of cars to watch as well. From the left a ’60 Ford Falcon Tudor Sedan, ’50 Chevrolet Styleline De Luxe 4 door sedan, ’58-’62 Volkswagen Type I, ’55 Buick convertible from Washington state, and a ’56 Chevrolet.
Thanks for joining us on our parking lot tour!
The second photo shows the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River connecting New York City with Fort Lee, New Jersey. I believe the setting is Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan.
Just lovely pictures on a quiet Sunday morning .
Thank you .
The VW in the last picture is a ’60 ~ November of ’63, they changed the Wolfsburg Crest in 1960 and dropped it in November of the ’63 model year.
-Nate
The big, blue “Pontiac” at the seaside, maybe? It’s beautiful. Wonder if the “St Louis”, pic is in the area where they built the arch?
A lot a parking lots went away when that area was redeveloped I understand.
Looking at these pictures it is understandable why people traded cars every 3-4 years in the 1950s, early 1960s. Auto styles changed rapidly.
Today, difficult to see the difference between a ten or 15 year old car and something newer.
Surely you are not accusing Detroit of planned obsolescence.
The cavalcade of colours is so cool! Cars in the 1950s may have been disposable but they sure had pizzaz. It is interesting how many cars were green. It is so refreshing to see real colours, not a sea of white, black, silver and grey.
Outstanding collection today! I wish I had more time to enjoy these right now.
Just a quick ID on one of the details – in the Port Arthur fishery photo, the mystery license plate on the blue-over-white Mercury coupe appears to be a 1960 Mississippi plate.
One thing that stands out in this set of pictures is fender skirts, a 50s fad that was pretty much gone in the 60s. St Louis has three in a row. Most are on hardtops.
I know a lot of CCers don’t appreciate the muted colours of cars today. Neutral shades, white, black and silver, more dominant in any public collection of cars.
While at the same time, there has been a renaissance in building architecture, and public spaces. I personally prefer this de-emphasis on drawing attention to cars, in these settings. Rather to landscape architecture, and building structures. Public spaces in general. More attractive building facades, and design. I find appeal, in more colour and graphic patterns, used in modern architecture.
In many of these 1950’s shots, the bright chrome and colours of the flashy cars, compete for your viewing attention, with the simple pleasure of enjoying the natural beauty of the locations, and structures.
Growing up, I associated larg collections of 1950’s and 1960’s cars with junked cars and scrap yards. Overdone 1950’s cars appearing like foreground clutter, in some of these images.
I see parking skills were at a premium in the A&P picture. The San Diego shot is from Cabrillo National Monument at the tip of Point Loma. Don’t know how many times I was up there for the view and pictures in the 70’s. This was clearly before the visitor center went in and the parking area paved and painted.
A&P was once the largest retailer of any kind in the US, maybe the world, with 15,000 stores in the 1930s, a near-monopoly, before beginning a slow and steady decline. I remember a nearby store that looked exactly like that one. A&P built a bunch of those, only to find they were too small for the modern supermarket era. They finally went out of business entirely a decade ago. But once upon a time imagining A&P would fail would be like today imagining Amazon, Google, or McDonalds going out of business (or Sears, which is down to about 8 stores). There is no such thing as too big to fail.
Here’s another A&P parking lot photo I like, from at least late 1958 near an (also defunct) Arlan’s department store, one of the many businesses that set up shop in the former Packard complex.
A&P was a big player, here in Canada. They were one of the first grocery chains here, to offer 24-hour stores in some markets.
Lots of memories come out a that “A&P”, pic! As is mentioned above, the parking jobs are a “hoot”!
Betting at least one of the cars belongs to an employee. lol
I recall A&P since I did live back east from 1954-66. In fact my parents sued A&P in either 1958. Remember back in the day some of their stores were not like the large ones you see today. So their storage was in the basement and you accessed the basement via a ground sidewalk metal cellar door. Remember those?
So on one visit, with my mother, I was holding the door open for my mother according to her when another woman rushed out in front of her. She hit the door and the door knocked me back some. Guess what was behind me, opened, and no protection. That metal door and I went down the stairs to the bottom. Ended up with stiches in my jaw and you can still see the scar today. The store was sued for medical costs and the like as they had no railings to prevent people from falling in. This, as related by my mother as I have no recollection.
I just showed the A&P picture to my wife and asked her what it triggered in her memory. We both had the same memory. It was the smell of fresh ground coffee. Eight O’Clock Coffee. A&P had coffee grinders at the end of each register to grind your coffee beans as you checked out. Their stores smelled heavenly!
+1! (On being in line at the A&P when someone was having their coffee ground – that SO brings back memories!)
And although they’re gone, their Eight O’Clock Coffee brand lives on.
Fun fact: the Eight O’Clock coffee brand is now owned by a subsidiary of Tata Group, the same folks who build Range Rovers.
A&P sold off the brand and product in 2003 after making and selling it themselves since 1859. Unlike most of today’s supermarkets, A&P made much of their own food and products rather than just slap their logo on stuff made by other companies.
The lot in St. Louis was a Park-n-Ride facility, where you got on bus to get you into the CBD of St. Louis. I can’t ID the bus by number, but it was a Yellow Coach TD4006, a special model built to St. Louis Public Service (the main public transit operator in the St. Louis metropolitan area before public ownership bought the area’s transit operators in 1963) in 1942…the interior of these buses resembled its latest PCC trolleys, from 1941 and 1946. SLPS did keep up maintenance on their vehicles, so it was used, though I can’t say when the service ended.
I second the motion that the 2nd picture is of the George Washington bridge, taken from the Washington Heights area; no doubt along the Henry Hudson Parkway. The picture was taken before the lower deck (nicknamed “Martha”, by some wags!) was added to the bridge in 1962. If the large tree wasn’t in the way, you would be able to see the famous Little Red Lighthouse at the base of the bridge’s eastern tower. Great pix, as usual!🌞
Re: A&P parking, they still park that way at my neighborhood Safeway.
Is that a Crown school bus in Tbm3fan’s photo?
What stands out in the A&P picture to me is how low the 57 Plymouth is compared to the older cars, not surprising I know, but it really stands out.
The second Ford in the A&P parking lot appears to be an 1954 and not a 1953 (or at least it has the wider 1954 trunk emblem).
The second Ford in the A&P parking lot appears to be an 1954 and not a 1953 (or at least it has the wider 1954 trunk emblem).
I had forgotten 8:00 o’clock coffee. Boy did it smell good