The Struggle for Baltimore's First Parking Meters

Parisian women in 1960, not Baltimore, hon.

  To look at the prolific distribution of parking meters across the City of Baltimore, one might think that they've been there near the time of the earliest automobile.  It turns out that the Baltimore City Council first took up the suggestion of installing meters in the Summer of 1937, only to banter about it for close to two decades.

  Baltimore's traffic problem began to annoy city traffic officials by the mid 20's and they had been hearing of the success these devices brought many other cities across America - the first in the U.S., according to "thexpiredmeter.com" was installed in downtown Oklahoma City, OK produced by the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company.

  It became a nearly perennial occurrence that some bill came to the City Council over the 18 years until in February 1955 when it was reported by the Baltimore Sun that it had "adopted a favorable report on a bill authorizing the installation of almost 3,000 parking meters on about 40 business streets."

Duncan-Miller Parking Meter, c1955

   By August of the same year, the Baltimore City Board of Estimates let its first of eventually two contracts for meters to the Duncan (Miller) Parking Meter Corporation of Chicago, IL which produced the first mechanical meters - the Dual Parking Meter Company produced the later automatic meters which operated at the insertion of a coin. The total cost of the original 2490 meters was $114,237.00.

Early Dual Parking Meter ad

  Under the administration of Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. (father of Representative Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi), the first parking meter in Baltimore was installed on North Avenue, followed by Charles Street by the 1st of November 1955. Others quickly followed on Eastern and Pennsylvania Avenues and near Cross Street Market. Closer to the Inner Harbor, the next set of meters were installed in Sam Smith Park, just off of the Pratt Street waterfront - according to a Baltimore Sun article, they had a "rate of a nickel an hour for private autos and 25 cents for two hours for semi-trailers."  By 1956, the Waverly and Highlandtown business districts were added to the city's collection due to the aggressive push of Henry A. Barnes, the City's traffic director at the time.

  Early disapprovals ensued between Federal and City officials as was indicted by a July 22, 1958 Baltimore Sun article that reported "not one red penny of funds from this office will be dropped into the city's new red parking meters on Government property, the U.S. marshal declared.  He was apparently miffed that the City had allotted space on Calvert Street near the Battle Monument for the "Federal Bureau of Investigation (4 spaces) and armed forces recruiting (6 spaces), but not one for the Federal marshal's cars."

(Note: Referenced article is courtesy of The Baltimore Sun)