Morrissey Garage Brick, 1919

Over 100 years old, this is The Parking Podcast Museum’s oldest artifact. Read more about the Morrissey Garage from an excerpt in an IPMI Parking & Mobility article entitled “Not So New” below:

“The first purpose-built garage was constructed in Chicago in 1898. Again in Chicago, the earliest recorded multilevel parking garage was built in 1918. Less than a year later, while World War I was coming to a close, the Morrissey Garage was built in downtown Louisville. With the Morrissey Garage recorded as the first parking facility in Louisville, in less than six years Louisville will celebrate 100 years of Louisville Parking.

Originally called the Bosler’s Fireproof Garage, the Morrissey Garage incorporated several sustainable and citizen friendly initiatives that many parking garages nearly a century later fail to incorporate. For example, the Morrissey Garage was a parking facility that incorporated ground floor retail. Over the decades, the Morrissey Garage has housed several businesses such as a fruit market, bookstore, surgical supply store, Goodrich Tires store and a garage equipment store. By providing space for these retail establishments, the Morrissey Garage helped reduce urban sprawl while helping to prevent the need to develop on previously undeveloped land. The Morrissey Garage provided the ground floor retail while also designing the garage to relate to the accompanying street and surrounding architecture. The Morrissey Garage contributed to its urban environment by having its façade provide architectural continuity with the other buildings along Third Street. Unfortunately, many garages today in downtown Louisville – and elsewhere – display little architectural synonymy with their surrounding environment. The Morrissey Garage also provided amenities such as vehicle detailing, polishing and minor vehicle services allowing drivers to accomplish such tasks without leaving the garage

Having not parked a vehicle in decades, the Morrissey Garage was boarded up for many years to keep it from being an unattended homeless shelter. In 1983, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was listed in Preservation Louisville’s Ten Most Endangered Places for many years…”

In 2015, the parking garage was demolished to make way for the Omni Louisville Hotel, and the brick was donated to The Parking Podcast.

Sponsor: This artifact made possible due to the generous donation of Joseph Doering.