Customer Reviews

The Face of America: Behind the Bars. Like slaves straining at the bars of their cages, the cars stare out. Surely such a sight would have puzzled the wagon makers who made America's first automobiles, because they could scarcely have forseen today's king-sized problem: Where do you park fifty-five million of them? These glistening, streamlined slaves are thus imprisoned because Salt Lake CIty has its metropolitan share of this twentieth-century headache. Wide-open suburban shopping centers were drawing off more trade each year. So downtown mechants suffered. Then Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution - the Mormon Church is the principal owner of Salt Lake's largest department store - struck back: It built this extraordinary $850,000, five-layer cake in its back yard, to receive an automotive filling. Now shoppers can park, 550 at a time, a few steps from Women's clothing or House furnishings. And, until their mistresses free them to the open road, the cars rest safe in jail. Photograph by Joern Gerdts. ..... 1958 Saturday Evening Post Picture, A5230A.