20 TON FLOOR JACK

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The Arc Deco Sofia Brothers Warehouse was designed by the firm of Jardine, Hill & Murdoch as one of two Kent Automatic Parking Garages. Built in 1929-30, the garage used a patented automatic parking system in which an electrical "parking machine" engaged cars by their rear axles and towed them from the elevator platform to parking spots. As the use of automobiles increased after the First World War, the creation of parking facilities became a necessity in urban areas and the design of garages a new field for architects.

However, in September of 1931, the Kent garage enterprise failed, and the company was reorganized without the Kent Brothers. The building was operated as a garage until 1943, when the Central Savings Bank (holder of the mortgage), sold it to the Sofia interests, who removed the garage apparatus blocked up the original vehicular entrance on Columbus Avenue, and converted the building to a storage warehouse. The architect of the alteration was George S. Kings ley.

The Sofia Brothers Warehouse occupies a prominent site on Columbus Avenue near the southern edge of the Upper West Side. - It was only towards the end of the 19th century (in the 1870s) that the development of New York City extended north of 59th Street into the then-rural Upper West Side. Though the rectangular street grid had been superimposed over the entire island as early as 1811, it wasn't until the construction of the Ninth Avenue El that the Upper West Side experienced large-scale urban expansion.

While older village centers existed at Harsenville near 72nd Street, and Bloomingdale at 86th Street, rowhouses for affluent residents were built near public improvements such as Riverside Park and Drive. Other houses and tenements were constructed near the elevated railway stops at 72nd , 81st and 93rd Streets.

Throughout much of the 19th century, the West Side, south of 60th Street, was the home of Manhattan's black population. By 1900, the black community had spread as far north as 64th Street, west of Broadway. The area between 60th and 64th Streets, consisting mostly of dilapidated tenement housing, small industrial buildings, and groups of stables, was known as Columbus Hill because of its proximity to Columbus Circle until it became the scene of bloody racial riots involving veterans of the Spanish-
American War and was renamed "San Juan Hill."

This this area served as a transitional zone to the more exclusive rowhouse blocks to the north. The continued presence of the Ninth Avenue El did not enhance the desirability of the San Juan Hill neighborhood as a place to live. An attempt was made to change the neighborhood's image by changing the names of Ninth and Tenth Avenues to Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.

As the. 20th-century progressed, the neighborhood changed to light industrial uses. The 1936 tax map shows gas stations, garages, auto dealerships, and factory service centers lining the streets from West 59th to West 70th Streets, especially between Amsterdam and West End Avenues. The Sofia Brothers Warehouse, then the Kent Parking Garage, erected adjacent to the Packard Motor Car Company warehouse and showrooms.

The area retained its fragmented character until the erection of Lincoln Center in the 1960's just to the north and related redevelopment of the Upper West Side during the past two decades.

The Kent Parking Garage; now the Sofia Brothers Warehouse, was designed in the increasingly popular Art Deco style which.... "through the late 20s and early 30s...was being applied to an ever greater range of building types. It seems likely that for this location the client sought an Art Deco design with its implications of modernity and progress to indicate the innovative nature of the new parking system housed within the building.

The Art Deco movement on the Upper West Side had been first manifested in such apartment buildings as No. 336 Central Park West at 94th Street (1928, Schwartz & Cross;, the Master Apartments on Riverside Drive at 103rd Street in (1928, Heinle, Corbett i Harrison and Sugarman & Berger) and the Eldorado on Central Park West at 90th Street (1929, Margon & Holder) .

The Kent- Parking Garage, dates from 1929-30. Other major Art" Deco buildings of 1929 are the Daily News Building on 42nd Street by Howells & Hood and the Salvation Army Building on 14th Street by Voorhes, Gemlin & Walker.

The firm "of Jardine, Hill & Murdock, which designed the Kent Automatic Parking Garage was the successor firm to D & J Jardine, later, Jardine, Kent & Jardine, and Jardine, Kent & Hill. The Jardine firm was especially active in the last quarter of the 19th century in the design of rowhouses, apartment buildings, and commercial buildings, including the cast-iron B. Altman & Co. store at Sixth Avenue and 19th Street.

The successor firm continued in the commerci

About every hour this theatre puts on a free "special effects" show. It is loosely based on Aztec mythology and at the end this serpent rises up to the second floor complete with fog machine and moving head and mouth. The sacred message that he brings is that the next picture show is about to start.