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Old gas stations

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,699
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
One more that I love from Shorpy: Cambridge, Vermont, 1937.

View attachment 118355

People today tend to idealize the gas station of the Era with the advertising image of the smiling bow-tie-wearing jaunty clean-cut attendant in a sparkling art-deco station. This guy is, however, far more the reality of what the average person in an average town might have encountered when they went to buy their gas.
 

2jakes

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,680
Location
Alamo Heights ☀️ Texas
Preview.jpeg
Using "Preview", I reversed the image and went on the search engine for "Seaton Garage".

This came up:
seaton-service-station_large.jpg

Seaton garage was just before The Front on the north side of Seaton Lane, selling gasoline and also servicing cars. The photo was taken in 1962 and at some point in the 1980s, the garage was demolished and Belgrave Court housing was built on the site.
 
Messages
15,259
Location
Arlington, Virginia
Those fake Colonial cupolas were a huge fad in the early 70s, during the runup to the buy-centennial, and they were especially prevalent in New England, where there are more fake cupolas than real ones. Along with American/Amoco, which seemed to pioneer the trend, Sunoco went in big for the style, renovating hundreds of their oblong-box stations with fake gable roofs and a quaint little cupola with a functional weathervane on top.

calssunoco1969.jpg
Love that picture Lizzie.
 
Messages
15,259
Location
Arlington, Virginia
District of Columbia, 1919. Willard Service Station, Washington Battery Co., 1623 L Street.
View attachment 118340

View attachment 118342
The sign: “We respectfully request customers to refrain from talking to workmen. Any information desired will be cheerfully given out by floor superintendent.” National Photo Company glass negative.
That first picture hangs in the Kennedy Warren condo on Connecticut Ave, along with several old DC photos. Its super cool
 
Messages
15,259
Location
Arlington, Virginia
Every DC-area visible-register pump has had a metal protective screen around the glass. Makes me wonder if it was some kind of local ordinance--or there were just a lot of vandals around.
It wasn't a city wide ordinance. It just depended on location and the owners decision. If it was a tougher neighborhood, they got the wire screen. Also, as Lizzie stated, it protected them from weather. However, if it was in a nicer and high dollar neighborhood, they didn't put them on.
(Thats just DC I'm referring to.)
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,699
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Yep, before the Socony-Vacuum merger, Mobiloil was widely sold and advertised at stations featuring other gasoline brands, but when the new company began pushing Mobilgas as a nationwide brand in 1934, that stopped almost instantly.

Like so many other of its old trademarks, ExxonMobil keeps the Gargoyle brand alive by slapping onto one of its more obscure industrial products: Gargoyle Arctic Refrigeration Oil.

Useless fact that will make you a popular guest at parties: there is an ocean inlet on the coast of Antarctica called "Mobiloil Bay," because the explorer that mounted the expedition sold naming rights to various formations to commercial sponsors as a way of financing his trip. Even then, the Boys never missed a trick.
 
Messages
17,181
Location
New York City
...Useless fact that will make you a popular guest at parties: there is an ocean inlet on the coast of Antarctica called "Mobiloil Bay," because the explorer that mounted the expedition sold naming rights to various formations to commercial sponsors as a way of financing his trip. Even then, the Boys never missed a trick.

Amazing. Did the explorer even have that right to sell that? And if so, kudos to him for creative financing. As to the Boys, fish swim, that's what they do.


That is awesome - sated my always strong mullion-window need for the day. Bet ya there was a deafening rattle inside that structure in a strong wind.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,699
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Richfield stole the design for that type of building in toto from Shell, which developed it in 1915 as their "Type A" station. Hundreds of them went up all along the West Coast from 1915 until about 1930 or so -- they were cheap to buy and cheap to set up, and if a station failed you could take one down in an afternoon and move it someplace else. THey were a lot sturdier than they looked -- I lived down the street from a perfectly intact specimen in Santa Barbara in 1983.

As for Antarctica, it was pretty much catch-as-catch-0can fpr explorers in the 1920s, and all sorts of weird names got scattered across the map.
 
Messages
15,259
Location
Arlington, Virginia
Richfield stole the design for that type of building in toto from Shell, which developed it in 1915 as their "Type A" station. Hundreds of them went up all along the West Coast from 1915 until about 1930 or so -- they were cheap to buy and cheap to set up, and if a station failed you could take one down in an afternoon and move it someplace else. THey were a lot sturdier than they looked -- I lived down the street from a perfectly intact specimen in Santa Barbara in 1983.

As for Antarctica, it was pretty much catch-as-catch-0can fpr explorers in the 1920s, and all sorts of weird names got scattered across the map.
Interesting about that type of station. I have never seen one. Was that staffed by one man? It doesn't look big.
 
Messages
15,259
Location
Arlington, Virginia
Usually just one attendant -- the inside was just big enough for a little display of packaged products and a cash register. There was , pointedly, no desk and no chair -- the attendant was not expected to spend any time sitting down.
That is super cool. Sad that it doesn't exist anymore. In todays world of less staff and quick service, it seems viable, if there were more pumps. And it doesn't take up much real estate. Good for a quick check over and gas on the road
 

vitanola

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,254
Location
Gopher Prairie, MI
View attachment 118357
Using "Preview", I reversed the image and went on the search engine for "Seaton Garage".

This came up:
View attachment 118358
Seaton garage was just before The Front on the north side of Seaton Lane, selling gasoline and also servicing cars. The photo was taken in 1962 and at some point in the 1980s, the garage was demolished and Belgrave Court housing was built on the site.

That's really quite funny!

For those who aren't in on the joke, the upper photo was taken on Seaton Ave. in Washington DC in 1919 or 1920. The lower photo was taken in Hartepool, Northumberland, on the North Sea Coast of Great Britain, apparently, from the car in the yard and the advertising, in the early 1960s.
 

vitanola

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,254
Location
Gopher Prairie, MI
District of Columbia, 1919. Willard Service Station, Washington Battery Co., 1623 L Street.
View attachment 118340

View attachment 118342
The sign: “We respectfully request customers to refrain from talking to workmen. Any information desired will be cheerfully given out by floor superintendent.” National Photo Company glass negative.

In those early days of the electric self-starter those battery service stations were necessities. Storage batteries were expensive, and between the poorly pasted plates, fragile wood separators, and leaky tarred wood cases, batteries required a great deal of service, and more-or-less frequent rebuilding. The Willard firm, which was headquartered on Taft Ave. on the the eastern edge of Cleveland, pioneered modern construction, introducing their famous "Threaded Rubber" jars in 1913, and cases in 1915.
 

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