SAHARA Highlights: Garages

Le Corbusier saw the car as motivating new forms of city making. Whether in the form of grand high-speed boulevards or in an aesthetic of machine-made materials and mass production, for him, the car was an avatar of contemporary civilization. Nearly a century after the publication of Vers Une Architecture, finding ways to accommodate the proliferation of the car is a central problem for city builders.

The variety of parking and service garages in this selection illustrates the myriad ways in which people have coped with the problem of providing and maintaining the infrastructure necessary to support the automobile in the modern era. Sometimes fanciful, sometimes deadly earnest, and usually consuming large parcels of land, garages also constitute a substantial part of the SAHARA collection.

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Frank Lloyd Wright, garage at William G. Fricke House, Oak Park, Illinois, added for second owner, Emma Martin, in 1907. Photograph by James Caulfield, 2004.

Rittenhouse Garage No. 1, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, c. 1910; converted to apartments 2015. Photograph by Dell Upton, 1987.

Konstantin Mel'nikov and Vladimir Shukhov, Bakhmet'evskii Bus Garage (today Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center), Obraztsova Ul. 11, Moscow, Russia, 1926-1927. Photograph by Evangelos Kotsioris, 2013.

Plumley’s Long Lake Garage and Taxi Service, 1179 Main Street, Hamilton, New York, c. 1910s. Photograph by Richard Longstreth, 2015.

Pierre Bousquet, Auto-Hall Garage, Casablanca, Morocco, 1930. Photograph by Jean-Louis Cohen, 1994.

Paul Rudolph, Temple Street Garage, New Haven, Connecticut, 1959-63. Photograph by Lauren Soth.

John Portman and Associates, Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Shopping Center, Los Angeles, California, 1974-1976, originally built without direct street access. One entered by car into the garage or through bridges connecting adjacent buildings above the street. Photograph by Dell Upton, 2009.

Frank O. Gehry and Associates and Gruen Associates for Rouse Company, Santa Monica Place Mall Parking Garage, 395 Santa Monica Pier, Los Angles, California, 1979-1981; demolished 2008. Photograph by Dell Upton.

Santiago Calatrava Valls, Quadracci Pavilion - Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2001, view of underground parking garage. Photograph by Lisa Shrenk, 2008.

Herzog & de Meuron, 1111 Lincoln Road Parking Garage, Miami Beach, Florida, 2008-2010. Photograph by Peter Clericuzio, 2012.