Today’s building is simple but nice. My wife doesn’t share my interest in random, ordinary old buildings that seem interesting, but she pointed this one out to me the other day when we were out in Fairfax (visiting, as it happens, this neat garden center that I previously wrote about).

Take a look at this auto garage:

This side faces the main road, U.S. 29. The side with the garage bays faces the side road:

Of course, I immediately wondered what it used to look like and whether it had been altered. I also wondered how old it was. The address won’t come up in Fairfax County’s official online property record search; a LoopNet listing from the last time it was up for sale identifies the build year as 1976 (and also calls it a one-story building).

The answer is nothing shocking here, just something very nice: the building was brightened up and made colorful, including the addition of second-story windows. Here’s what it used to look like, which is probably what it looked like when built. (The painted name on the brick is kind of cool.)

I’m curious about those added windows—it sure looks, in the shot of the building post-renovation, like there are lights inside. So either there is a second story that the sales listing got wrong, or the first-floor ceiling is open for the whole building, and the lights you can see are the lights in the garage bays. That’s most likely, but I love the idea of a tiny second floor in a quarter of the building’s upper half.

Next door to this, there’s a similar building that hasn’t been renovated and refreshed.

Look at the difference. Maybe utilitarian bareness is fitting for an auto shop, but there was a time when even parking garages and gas stations tried to be works of art. I’ll take that concealment over plain utilitarianism any day.

Related Reading:

A Little Bit Of Motel

A Lesson in Adaptive Reuse

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #6

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