The Eighteenth-Century Parking Lot

This is the part of architectural history they don't teach you. I came across this little jem in a history of Frederick the Great. The new (and first) Opera House in Berlin opened in 1742. What's fascinating is the description: "It was a beautiful and supremely comfortable building with room for a thousand carriages to park outside." [emphasis mine]

This was not only pre-automobile, it was pre-railroad. Perhaps the problem is mass affluence after all.