Have you heard of the Ghost Parking Lot? It’s gone now, but back in 1977 a very interesting art and architecture collective called Sculpture in the Environment (SITE) founded by artist and architect James Wines got a commission to do something interesting with a rarely-used parking lot in Hamden, Connecticut. Even though the group had been around since 1970 and had made plenty of proposals, the Ghost Parking Lot was their first actually realized public artwork.
The plan was to take 20 cars, strip them of their interiors and anything unnecessary, then fill them with concrete and cover them with asphalt, so that they would appear to be ghostly apparitional cars that were part of and growing out of the parking lot itself.
The result was genuinely striking and evocative, both incredibly normal and strangely ethereal all at once.
Part of the point of the installation was to make a piece of public art that simply could not work anywhere else, outside of its context; you couldn’t just cut out these cars and stick them in a museum. It only works on the specific site of an actual parking lot, and that was very much by design.
I like that there’s at least one convertible there, and people seemed to really like sitting inside or on that one.
Most of the cars are mid-to-late ’60s American iron, with a Mustang and an old Cadillac and some old Mopars in there, but there is also a Karmann-Ghia somewhere there, the car of a woman’s deceased son who died in Vietnam, and whose glove box contained his war medals.
The meaning of the work can be interpreted a number of ways, and definitely has been, from a commentary on our dependence on fossil fuels to how embedded the automobile is in our culture, but fundamentally I think it’s just about taking something familiar and twisting it until it becomes novel and interesting.
I’ve heard there’s a Starbucks on the site of the work now, which is the most depressing thing I’ve thought about in a long time.
But, still, I’m happy this once existed at all.
By the way, if you’re interested, SITE also designed some of the most wonderfully strange and subversive retail stores ever: the BEST Products stores. They all looked like they were collapsing or were survivors of some great catycalysm:
Look at these places!
Amazing stuff!
It was a pretty neat/unusual thing. Growing up in CT I have been through that area many times.
The colour of those photographs – they look so bright and current, when I assume they are 40+ years old. There is none of the different tint I associate with the 70s and 80s
Polaroids + Dark Wood Paneling = red-eyed yellow tinted memories for everyone
Wow… The parking lot art is cool, but I had been struggling for a couple of months to remember the name of the chain store with quirky architecture. I can now sleep tonight. Thank you!
In the late 80s, I worked at Bob Thomas Ford on Dixwell Avenue in Hamden. The ghost lot was directly across the street from the dealership. Since the little used ‘back of the lot” happened to be right up against Dixwell Ave., which was the main drag in town, the ghost cars were highly visible. For me, seeing the contrast between the ghost cars and our shiny new ASC McLaren Mustangs, Probes and Escort GTs, gave me a daily dose of perspective. “Someday, all these new cars will be long gone, but the ghost cars will live on.” So much for my prognostications.
I grew up in Richmond, VA, where Best Products was founded by Sydney Lewis (R.I.P.) and Frances Lewis. They were/are huge supporters of the arts, and are local legends; the Virginia Fine Arts Museum has a wing named after them and is loaded with their modern art.
Every year the Best Products catalog would come out before Christmas and had a few pages with photos of all of their stores and any sculptures displayed there.
The first time my family saw a Best Products (the one in the last photo), my dad had to pull into the parking lot to figure out what the hell was going on; I was a kid and literally thought the wall was peeling off. I grew up knowing that people could run a company, make loads of money, and use it to promote the arts and the community.
“I’ve heard there’s a Starbucks on the site of the work now, which is the most depressing thing I’ve thought about in a long time.”
There’s a John Wesley Harding song, “There’s a Starbucks Where The Starbucks Used To Be”
And I miss the old Starbucks
Though the new one’s just the same
It’s got coffee and CDs
It’s got the same name
In fact, I wouldn’t’ve even noticed
If you hadn’t told me
There’s a Starbucks where the Starbucks used to be
Lived over the hill from there until I was 5 and we moved to the next town north. I think I saw Maxwell Smart / “The Nude Bomb” at the theater in the background with an underwater mural painted on it.
Thanks for today’s art hit. Works on me kinda like a vitamin pill.
There was a similar, though smaller, car art installation in DC years ago. I always thought it was cool.
I once helped family move their stuff out of a storage facility built in an old tire factory. It was very cool walking in the front door and seeing a bunch of old tools and such sitting around, probably exactly where they were the day the factory closed. I don’t know if there are enough urban decay enthusiasts(?) to keep it open, but I feel like those BEST stores might be popular today.
I remember those SITE BEST stores, unfortunately the ones near me were all pretty ordinary boxes. The store where the corner lifted up to enter was my favorite design.
We did have Fry’s electronics though.. Miss them.
I miss Fry’s Electronics as well. I worked for a software company that had a rather large booth at the National Association of Broadcasters show every year in Las Vegas. We had sales reps and engineers come in for the show from all around the world and the first thing they would do is head to Fry’s and load up on all kinds of stuff that was cheaper there than it was where they lived. Some brought empty suitcases to fly it all back home.
I did the NAB show for a few years with add ons for the Video Toaster. Fun times.
Lesson learned, don’t make a demo where you push the button numbered four and the live video of the visitor to the booth shrinks into a golf ball and falls into a hole.
Had to rewrite that demo the first night, since Asian countries were a big market that we were trying to get into.
I miss interesting store design! Those Best stores rocked. Foley’s had great tile mosaics down here, but alas, the one in Tyler’s been completely wiped out for a friggin’ Hobby Lobby. Yet another reason not to shop at that place, I guess. Buying stolen artifacts and destroying modern pieces of art, too.
I want to live across the street from the best store in Baltimore. It’s front façade is tilted and look like it was about to take off into the sky. I was kind of sad when they tore it down.
I’m pretty familiar with site specific art but this piece is new to me. It’s awesome. Thanks, Autopian!
I grew up in the area, leaving the area in ’82. I remember the controversy over this art installation – some screamed it was hideous, others said it was cool. All in the eye of the beholder I suppose. With the exception of destroying some beautiful cars (although I’m sure they were all on their last leg….), I thought it was cool looking.
Was always vexed why the two shopping centers (Hamden Plaza and Hamden Mart) were connected yet non-continuous, but I believe they were developed 2-3 years apart.
I’m still in the area! I used to love the display, as well as all of the other art around! Sadly the entire Plaza has been renovated into featureless oblivion, looking like any other strip mall now, except for the sign, which is actually a reproduction.
This seems a good time to mention my favorite of this genre, 1970’s Concrete Traffic by Wolf Vostell. A ’50s Cadillac encased in concrete in a brutalist style.
It sat outside for decades, but is now in a parking garage, occupying a random space.
https://www.artforum.com/features/car-culture-wolf-vostells-concrete-traffic-232058/
I came to say the same. I knew about this concrete Caddy, but not the ghost parking lot.
The Ghost Parking Lot!! I grew up and live in the area and used to go to the Hamden Plaza all the time as a kid!
I *loved* these cars. I used to make my mom park next to them when we went shopping! They were down by the street about as far as you could get from most of the shops, so she was pretty obliging to my obsession.
There is a Starbucks on the site now, although they were removed about 10 years ago when time and weather had done quite a number on them…. and I just looked up the date of removal so by 10 years I actually mean TWENTY ONE. They were removed in 2003. Yikes.
The entire plaza was whimsically designed. In the picture posted you can see the movie theater with a giant freaking WHALE MURAL on it. There were also small interactive and movable art pieces everywhere. Except for the Hamden Plaza sign, which is a recreation, the rest of the mall is now completely generic shopping center, as are most of the stores, with the exception of Ashleys Ice Cream, a local favorite.
Thanks for posting this! It brought back great memories!
PS the Karmann Ghia is in the bottom photo you posted of the lot- second from the end.
Murals on buildings are awful awful awful, EXCEPT for Whale Murals! Those are always good and always welcome
I agree with this 100%!! And thanks to your comment, I googled whale murals and discovered….that one artist is responsible for a ton of them!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Whaling_Walls
BUT the Hamden Plaza one wasn’t one of his. Which means that the US just went crazy for Whale Murals in the 60s and 70s, and clearly we need to a return to this era.
Hold up, I thought the Wailing Wall was in Jerusalem?
As someone who’s had to look at the mural on Broderick Tower for most of my adult life, no thanks. I used to date a girl that went to Lamphere high school (one of his other murals) which is where he’s from apparently; he came in and did a self-righteous talk about how important he was.
Huh. There was one on a building in Philadelphia near where I went to college. I remembered it as having been there the whole time but it turns out it was only painted the year before I graduated.
A gas station I grew up near had a mural of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon racing side by side towards the viewer at Daytona painted on the side. It was extremely well done, with proper lighting and shading with even the correct depth of field perspective. A few years ago when I went back to see it a new chain had bought the place and painted it over completely white like the soulless fucks giant corporate chains are.
NASCAR over whales. Fight me.
Hear me out… NASCAR with Whales!
(alternatively Welsh NASCAR)
Dale and Jeff on saddled Orcas (with whales wearing dead salmon on their heads. It was the style at the time.)
I bought a Texas Horned Toad at the Animal Kingdom pet store. Lived about a week.
The whale mural had rocks/pebbles at the bottom and some rocks had the faces of famous people.
There used to be a movie theater in that plaza that we went to when I was a kid and went to the movies with friend who parents had a now-closed restaurant near by in the middle downtown New Haven. I think the original Harry Hamlin Clash of the Titans was the least-weird movie I saw there.
I used to go to that theater as well! It’s now a Men’s Wearhouse 🙁 What restaurant was it!
The Educated Burgher. It closed about a decade ago, and I was there several decades before that. Man I’m old.
Loved Educated Burgher! They had those big beefy steak fries! Went there as a kid all the time, and in a previous life worked for Yale and that was one of my lunch go-tos. Miss all of those old NH mainstays- Clarks, The Doodle, Fitzwillys!
Man, time really does sneak up on us doesn’t it?
I think I saw that there too. And The Nude Bomb
Another blast from the past. I think I also saw Quest For Fire and Time Bandits there, along with the Ringo Starr / Dennis Quaid vehicle Caveman.
Early 80s man.
Wow I never clocked that Quaid (and Shelly Long) were in that.
I’ve never seen this, so thanks for exposing me to some cool new (but not new) art!
I remember BEST, the one near me was subdivided into a Mens Wearhouse and a Borders bookstore after they went defunct, with the building renovated to be boring and conventional. The Borders section has since been further subdivided into TJ Maxx and Homesense. Borders was nice, but I’d prefer having BEST back over those other two
Not the same but similar vein, the Omega Mart by MeowWolf is fucking amazing. I had a fantastic time there.
Wow I’ve never seen those BEST stores before, these are incredible. Man some companies used to spend their marketing dollars on just being really cool. Now they just go for maximizing inoffensiveness. Could you imagine if Home Depot or Kroger did something like this today? I’d want to shop there a lot more!
I just visited the American Dream Mall last week and I think I had a mild existential crisis in there… fascinating and deeply sad all at the same time… just the opposite of anything pictured above.
For real, those BEST stores are fantastic. I have no idea what the American Dream Mall is, the name alone conjures horror.
The mall is oversized, mostly empty, simultaneously looks like it was incredibly expensive and yet built as cheaply as humanly possible. And everything costs money (even parking in the comically oversized parking lots). Some private equity manager’s idea of what most middle class people think Luxury means, I guess? It really feels like the true embodiment of the American Dream: “Fake it ’til you make it!”
IIRC there was a BEST store that looked like a parking lot
There was Fry’s Electronics. They had one store with a flying saucer crashed into the front facade.
Ah, the Burbank CA location for Fry’s Electronics. It’s just south of the Bob Hope Airport a.k.a. Burbank Airport. If I did it right, this URL should take you to the street view of the crashed flying saucer embedded in the side of the building over the entrance: https://maps.app.goo.gl/GJEmSW4JeTEywHMt6
This store’s interior was decorated with an alien invasion theme, “War of the Worlds” style. Sadly it appears all the interior pictures were lost, as they were linked to the business listing. Which Google removed after Fry’s closed down.
The Fry’s in Roseville CA was very much train themed. Steam engine crashing though the area above the entrance, flooring as tracks throughout the store, murals on all the side walls. Roseville CA was, and still is, an important railroad place. Now it is an auto repair place. Sigh.
Ah yeah, there are pictures online. I feel like they should have separated the water tank and the locomotive a bit more on the outside facade.