Now I am always surprised at what was once familiar street furniture can disappear like snow in the winter sun.
And looking at this 1968 picture of St Peter’s Square there will be a few who wonder what I am on about.
But I suspect that anyone born in the last two decades may wonder what that poll with the domed shaped device beside the car was used for because the age of the parking meter has come and gone.
It was a short life.
The first in London was installed just fifty years ago which post dated their introduction in an American city by just 40 odd years.*
There are some in Central London but 3,500 have gone leaving just 800.
And as ever, I can’t remember exactly when they vanished from the streets of Manchester and Salford.
At which point I know someone will come up with chapter and verse and also point me to the surviving ones somewhere.
As it is there were parking meters here by 1961 when the barrow boys of Back Piccadilly were concerned that their livelihood was under threat from the introduction of parking meters along the narrow street in November of 1961.*
Our image was taken in the October of 1968.
And for me the bonus of the picture is that it shows those lost buildings, one of which went I think sometime in the early '70s and the other very recently.
Location; Manchester
Picture; St Peter's Square, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
*Time runs out for the parking meter, Josie Barnard, The Telegraph, November 07, 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/4029123/Time-runs-out-for-the-parking-meter.html
**Back Piccadilly may lose barrow Boys, Manchester Guardian, November 20, 1961
But I suspect that anyone born in the last two decades may wonder what that poll with the domed shaped device beside the car was used for because the age of the parking meter has come and gone.
It was a short life.
The first in London was installed just fifty years ago which post dated their introduction in an American city by just 40 odd years.*
There are some in Central London but 3,500 have gone leaving just 800.
And as ever, I can’t remember exactly when they vanished from the streets of Manchester and Salford.
As it is there were parking meters here by 1961 when the barrow boys of Back Piccadilly were concerned that their livelihood was under threat from the introduction of parking meters along the narrow street in November of 1961.*
And for me the bonus of the picture is that it shows those lost buildings, one of which went I think sometime in the early '70s and the other very recently.
Location; Manchester
Picture; St Peter's Square, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
*Time runs out for the parking meter, Josie Barnard, The Telegraph, November 07, 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/4029123/Time-runs-out-for-the-parking-meter.html
**Back Piccadilly may lose barrow Boys, Manchester Guardian, November 20, 1961
The 1968 Triumph Herald is parked of yet to be built Elisabeth House which was demolished in 2012.
ReplyDelete