December 5, 1951
An innovation in facilities for automobiles took place in northwest Washington, D.C., with the debut of the first push button-controlled parking garage. The pioneering Park-O-Mat garage, which was built on K Street between 14th and 15th Streets in the nation’s capital, did not have any ramps, aisles, or lanes. The garage instead relied on an attendant who, without even needing to enter a vehicle, could automatically park or return it in within a minute.
The owner of the Park-O-Mat was a businessman named Arthur G. Dezendorf. A 1952 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine recounted how he dreamt up the idea of this garage while visiting one of Washington’s most popular landmarks. Dezendorf was gazing at the Washington Monument one day when he started working out all sorts of calculations in his mind and envisioning the world’s tallest obelisk – measuring 555 feet (169 meters) in height and 55.5 feet (17 meters) square at its base — as the template for a new type of parking garage.
Dezendorf ultimately focused on the lower 400 feet (121.9 meters) of the Washington Monument. He figured that the combined width and length of that portion of the structure amounted to ample space for accommodating as many as 648 parked automobiles.
“The businessman knew that a conventional parking lot big enough to handle that many cars would cost a fortune, even if available,” reported Popular Mechanics. “Why not a tall narrow building?”
Dezendorf joined forces with inventor Richard L. Sinclair to develop that kind of parking facility, complete with the technology needed to shoehorn dozens of automobiles (not hundreds, as Dezendorf would have likely preferred) within its tight confines. In 1947, Sinclair was granted U.S. Patent 2,428,856 for a “vehicle parking apparatus” that would allow for an automated means for quickly getting automobiles into and out of a garage. (An image from that patent is included with this post.)
Sinclair’s invention became the defining feature of the Park-O-Mat, which was originally an 18-floor structure containing two elevators. Despite having a width of only 25 feet (7.6 meters) and a height of 40 feet (12.2 meters), the garage could hold up to 72 automobiles at a time.
Popular Mechanics, in its 1952 article, outlined how the apparatus designed by Sinclair made these novel parking arrangements possible. After someone drove into the garage and left their automobile there, the lone attendant pushed a button to enable an electrically powered steel dolly to slide underneath the vehicle. With the assistance of the motorized metal arms pressing against end of the automobile, the dolly maneuvered that vehicle into one of the elevators.
Popular Mechanics also described the next part of the process. “The attendant, noting from green lights on a 72-button control board which stalls are unoccupied, presses a button to instruct the mechanism as to where the car is to be parked,” reported the magazine. “The elevator moves up to the proper floor and the dolly rolls the car into the designated stall.” When the driver eventually returned to the garage, the attendant would press a button that triggered the dolly to get the vehicle in question. The dolly then whisked the automobile out of its stall, into one of the elevators, and back to the owner.
This new approach to parking received widespread attention. “Only One Man Needed to Park 72 Cars in U.S.A.,” proclaimed a headline in the Australia-based South Coast Times in October 1952. The Park-O-Mat helped set the stage for other automated parking garages in cities across the globe where available spaces for automobiles can be tough to find.
The trailblazing garage itself, however, had a relatively short existence. With the continued development of downtown Washington, property values made it increasingly impractical to use this segment of K Street exclusively for parking. An office tower with an address of 1424 K Street, N.W., can now be found at the one-time site of the Park-O-Mat.
Image Credit: Public Domain
For more information on the pioneering Park-O-Mat garage in Washington, D.C., please check out https://wtop.com/business-finance/2016/12/dcs-park-o-mat-opened-week-65-years-ago/ and https://ggwash.org/view/40165/64-years-ago-the-worlds-first-driverless-parking-garage-opened-in-dc
A copy of Richard L. Sinclair’s 1947 patent for a “vehicle parking apparatus” is available at https://patents.google.com/patent/US2428856A/en
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