[MassHistPres] THE OLIVE STREET GARAGEflyer

[Dennis De Witt]

Marcia

It is absolutely typical commercial vernacular of the period.  Tapestry brick, stucco, and the barest tinges of neoclassicism and north italian Renaissance brick vernacular (both extremely diluted from their high style then-recent sources).  Interestingly it could be a taxpayer of the same date in Chicago -- or anywhere in the midwest, where tapestry brick is far more common than hereabouts.  The only typical feature missing is some version of the Luxfer prism glass clearstory glazing that might once have been where the white panels are now.

It is also absolutely appropriate that it was an automobile use near one of the new highway association roads that accelerated the unification/homogenization of the american built environment.

A good person to read about the general processes this represents is John Brinkerhoff Jackson.  His eye for this post Henry Ford built environment, about which we preservationists often feel more than a little ambivalence, was honed by pre-interstate cross country motorcycle commuting (admittedly on a BMW, not a Harley) between Berkley & Harvard where, when I knew him, he taught alternate semesters.

Dennis De Witt