Love Atlanta? Then you should check out Pecanne Log, a blog dedicated to both the city’s history as well as her funkier neighborhoods and festivals. They have a post today about the Ivy Street Garage, Atlanta’s first parking deck, which opened 85 years ago this week:
On June 3, 1925, the Ivy Street Garage – Atlanta’s first parking garage – opened! Called a “mammoth automobile hotel” by the [Atlanta] Constitution [newspaper], it was six stories, held 600 cars, and offered white-glove valet, car wash, and basic maintenance and repair services. The Ivy Street Garage was said to be “one of the largest and perhaps the most modern structures of its kind in the world.”
The deck was one of the first parking decks in the United States to have one-way ramps instead of “auto-elevators”, which were much more common at the time. It did, however, have an elevator for customers, which was new at the time.
The Ivy Street Garage was eventually sold to Georgia State University, where it was converted to classrooms and is now known as Kell Hall. Architects decided to keep the existing ramps wherever possible, and this is why the building has ramps instead of stairs.
via pecanne log.