By Ross Eric Gibson
Special to the Sentinel
In the 1990s, the city wanted its new parking garage at Front Street and Soquel Avenue to fit into the humanist character of our post-earthquake downtown. So they hired architect Gary Garmann, whose initial design was more boxy with industrial details, and artwork to look like tire ad posters. Garmann said he was inspired that Front Street was once Auto Row, but a councilwoman told him they hired him to make it look LESS like a parking garage, with architecture to emphasize the businesses rather than car storage. “Then how will people know it’s a garage?” he asked. “With signs.” So it was modified.
Garmann can be forgiven to think Auto Row must have been like a “Gasoline Alley” of grease shops, tin warehouses and auto-wrecking yards. Yet the north end of Front Street below Cooper Street was the town’s Civic Center, with the octagonal Hall of Records, County Jail, City Hall, art gallery, music hall and gymnasium on the west side of the street, and the Greyhound and Peerless bus station to the east. City officials objected to grimy blacksmiths and grease shops within view of the County Seat, so these industrial services dressed themselves up.
Across from the Leonard Building at Front and Cooper, was Jenson Bros. Carriage Works. When the Model T Ford made automobiles affordable in 1909, Jenson Bros. became a Ford dealership in 1914, transforming their utilitarian facility into a fancy Tudor building. Otto Jenson’s daughter Truella got her driver’s license when she was 12 in 1927, so she could take the train to San Francisco, then drive back the cars her father would sell. This plucky girl ended up working across the street during World War II as Santa Cruz’s first policewoman.
The better blacksmiths had long built or serviced steam-powered engines, so they updated their professional title to auto mechanics. Next to Jenson’s Ford dealership was Ed Foster’s carriage making plant, in a fancy Italianate structure topped with a lifesize carved lion. But in 1914, as demand shifted to horseless carriages, Foster began building cars of his own design, which only ended during World War I.
The exotic 1920s
After the war, a generation of men came home with skills from working on military equipment in the most challenging conditions. Demand for automobiles rose with the opening of more paved roads, such as the 1921 Glenwood Highway (Highway 17). Gas was originally sold in cans at the grocery store, but soon pumps were installed at stores and blacksmith shops, which became service stations. Because early pumps could be rigged to deliver less than the gallons charged, a glass reservoir with molded gallon measures was filled first atop the pump before draining into the tank. Because the gas was visible, it was dyed different colors so you knew you were receiving the brand you wanted.
The Roaring ’20s was a time of modern technology and international travel, so auto showrooms of the time often reflected exotic destinations and high society, with the same spirit the new movie palaces displayed. The Dodge Bros. invented the first enclosed cab, yet most cars still had canvas tops, so “Blondy Clark’s Auto Tops” opened at 521 Front St. in 1925. The same year, Huston & Weymouth Auto Service opened in a building at 418 Front Street (now India Joze). It was designed by Soquel architect Lee Dill Esty, in Native American-inspired art deco, using a pueblo pot color scheme of red, black and white. Sylvan L. Thrash owned the nearby 1927 Oakland-Pontiac dealership at 516 Front Street, which was also designed with Native American overtones. In back was the Thrash Auto Body Hospital.
The original 1923 Studebaker dealership was in a Moraccan-inspired building at 608 Front Street, with stain glass windows. The business was moved in 1930 to a larger space at 440 Front Street, a simple yet pleasing brick showroom with neon signs. It became the Packard dealership in 1940, then after the war it was Levi Strauss manufacturing. The 1929 Palomar Hotel included the Palomar Garage at 711 Front Street, a fancy Spanish-style facility selling Buick, Cadillac and LaSalle. At 521 Front Street (behind the Del Mar Theater), the DeSoto dealership built a 1930 Spanish-style showroom, with iron grills on the door, and a bust of the conquistador Hernando deSoto in his quest for the Fountain of Youth. Auto Row was the place to bring your date, as the 1927 Dreamland Dance Hall was located over Edson Bewley’s welding shop at 313-315 Front Street.
The streamline era
Even during the Great Depression, auto showrooms conveyed a sense of recovery and prosperity. The streamline transportation aesthetic which borrowed from steamships and aeroplanes, found its way into automobiles and trains in the early 1930s, increasing speed through reduced wind-resistance. The aesthetic was also translated to stationary objects such as architecture, toasters, and radios, which appeared in motion while standing still. In 1939, R.W. Sanford and F.M. Chandler built their “Sweet Service Co.” auto parts store at 504 Front Street, in an ocean-liner influenced streamlined style heading Cathcart Street. (The facade has since been destroyed).
Non-essential auto production was stopped during World War II, creating a pent-up demand after the war for cars that were new, different, and futuristic. Used car lots proliferated, and another generation of soldiers trained in war machinery, were just as attracted to cheap second-hand cars they could soup-up into hot rods. The power car brand of the day was the Nash automobile, which pioneered heating, venting, unibody construction, and fuel efficiency. The local Nash dealership was built in 1946 with neon signs and streamline details, first painted the army’s olive drab, then changed to a red-and-white color scheme in 1948 as former soldiers sought to leave the war behind.
Mutchler Motors built the most impressive modern showroom in 1948 at 426 Front St. The streamline style included glass brick as an illuminated bulkhead for the showcase front bay, with a neon sign and mirror-black tiles that reflected the ambient light. Across the street at 429 Front St., Thrash built a sleek new Pontiac showroom in 1950, which became “Pontiac Grill” when the car business left. The same year Prolo Chevrolet located its used car lot next door at 425 Front St., and Farrar-Halbeck Buick built its stylish showroom at 201 Front St., with a fan-shaped display room like a cake-dome for cars, facing Laurel Street. Barry Swenson remodeled this building with a compatible addition, demonstrating the value a transitional approach can take.
The highrise era
Our Auto Row heritage may be ephemeral, a relic of a time when impressive showrooms displayed cars like jewelry, making each buyer feel like a member of an exclusive club. Sadly, it would seem two of the best of our showroom landmarks will be the first to go. The Mutchler Motors building (University Copy/Yoga Center), and Huston building (India Joze/dance studio), are proposed for demolition, along with the Sweet Service Co., to give way to three seven-story housing towers. The Preservation Commission recommended the landmarks might be incorporated into the new structures, or its features replicated as an homage to the site’s interesting history.
But the historic aspects seem the least of the housing project’s issues, building on a riparian corridor in a flood zone, with underground parking below the level of the river, on alluvial soil subject to liquefaction, and casting tall shadows over the river. This is the test case for an additional proposed six-story riverbank tower next door in place of the historic Thrash Motors building (516 Front St.) and Wells Fargo Mortgage (530 Front St.), as well as a row of proposed five-story buildings on Ocean Street, with similar problems of alluvial soil, high water table and parking below sea level.
While city government wanted development to activate the Riverwalk and showcase the river, four massive apartment towers in a row would seem to replace our river vista with a Great Wall of skyscrapers, while 2017 Downtown Plan guidelines propose walling-off the rest of the river in like-manner. Our dilemma is between stacking all of our housing needs in one giant pile to leave most of the city unhindered (the “Corridor Plan” concept), or finding ways to integrate housing more adeptly into our cultural landscape.
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History of Front Street’s Auto Row | Ross Eric Gibson - Santa Cruz Sentinel
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