Old gas stations

[LizzieMaine]

That style of station was only built for a couple of years in the mid-thirties between the end of the Denver Style and the rise of the Teague. Not all were as elaborate as this one, but most had at least some of that fancy tilework and the arch-shaped feature at the front. Very few of these type of buildings survive, and most that do have long since had the tile painted over and forgotten.

 

[Fading Fast]

Check out the tile work and that fireman's helmet over the front.

Rob

⇧ that is crazy awesome.

Hey, is that Bogie's car - a '38 Plymouth Deluxe (from The Big Sleep) - I spy in the background?

I'm not a car guy (I like old cars, but don't know them the way car guys do), but I am a film-noir-movie guy.

 

[David Conwill]

It's funny. I just Googled "Denver-style Texaco station" and found this story about a survivor (as of 2017) in Unionville, New York. What do I find at the bottom? Why a link back to this thread, of course!

 

[David Conwill]

⇧ that is crazy awesome.

Hey, is that Bogie's car - a '38 Plymouth Deluxe (from The Big Sleep) - I spy in the background?

I'm not a car guy (I like old cars, but don't know them the way car guys do), but I am a film-noir-movie guy.
View attachment 173368

It's definitely a 1937-'38 MoPar, but whether it be Plymouth, Dodge, De Soto, or Chrysler, I can't see enough to say for certain.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's a great article, with some great pix -- the building is almost completely unmolested, with a lot of the original internal fixtures intact. A great restoration project if someone had the time, money, and inclination to do it.

Note that there appears to be a piece of plywood or beaverboard or some such material nailed up in the top part of the roof gable, over the door. Remove that, and you will find an embedded Texaco sign, or at least the hole where one used to be.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Also, did anyone else notice the copy of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer laying on the floor? At the time of its publication, it was a huge success with many print runs - I wonder how long it's been just sitting there?

 

[Ghostsoldier]

I've read that book...twice... and is it ever long. [emoji44]

Rob

 

[Fading Fast]

I've read that book...twice... and is it ever long. [emoji44]

Rob

I have as well - it is that well done and that important and it almost reads like a novel. But I will admit, after the second time, I doubt there's going to be a third time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I reread it just recently, and it remains, for me, a far more reliable account of the period than the various revisionist works of recent decades. 500 years from now, people will still be reading Shirer to try and comprehend what happened.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

I've also read his "Berlin Diary", which in my opinion, isn't as enlightening as "Inside".

Rob

 

[Fading Fast]

I've also read his "Berlin Diary", which in my opinion, isn't as enlightening as "Inside".

Rob

Agreed

 

[LizzieMaine]

He wrote a lot of "Diary" under conditions of German censorship, but it was still considered a pretty disturbing work when it first came out. What really spurred "Rise and Fall" was the discovery that so much of what had happened in Germany was fully and completely documented in captured files -- things he could only conjecture about in "Diary" he could now prove, with names, dates, places, and statistics.

None of which explains why a paperback copy of "Rise and Fall" is lying in the debris of an abandoned Texaco station in upstate New York. Although that particular edition, and the Salem cigarette sign, both date to the mid-sixties, suggesting that's when the place was last in use.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Belfast, Maine c. 1940. The proprietor, Don Webber, was our wholesaler when we began selling Shell heating oil in the sixties. This station was replaced by a newer style in the mid-fifties, and became a convenience store where I bought my microwave burrito lunches when I worked in Belfast in the early eighties. I would ride my bike up the hill at far left to get to the radio station, and it was lethal.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Nice looking design.

Rob

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Various.

Rob

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Kesbec Oil Company was one of the first, if not the first, companies to open drive-up gas stations in New York City in the years before WWI -- they built up a pretty good chain of stations in the city during the twenties before Standard of New Jersey bought them out as part of its invasion of the Northeastern territory controlled by Standard of New York. Under the Standard Oil consent decree, Jersey Standard could not operate under the Standard name in "Soconyland," but it got away with using the Kesbec stations, along with the Colonial-Beacon stations in New England, to sell Esso products there.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here's an impressive example of a Kesbec station at Mulry Square, the intersection of 7th Avenue and Greenwich Street in Greenwich Village, taken in 1933. This was about a year before Esso rolled out its familiar oval logo, and you see the amalgamation of the Kesbec, Esso and Colonial brands in its early stages.

There's a lot going on here. The Kesbec station is attached to a White Tower hamburger joint in much the same way as you might find a Subway or a Taco Bell bundled with a convenience-store gas station today. And around the corner, at the right of the scene, is another, separate station -- a Warner-Quinlan dealer carrying Cities Service products. It would appear, from the 9 cents a gallon price the Warner-Quinlan station is offering, that a price war is going on. What else can you do when the other people are selling hamburgers? Here's a peek around the corner at the competition:

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Nice revamp.

Rob

 

[LizzieMaine]

I wonder what kind of pizza Walter Dorwin Teague liked?

 

[Fading Fast]

I wonder what kind of pizza Walter Dorwin Teague liked?

Well worded as the assumption is he - like every human on earth, ever - liked pizza, you are just wondering about his particular pizza preferences.

Kinda kidding aside, other than a girlfriend who didn't eat cheese, I can't think of a single person I've know who hasn't at least liked, if not loved, pizza. Even that girlfriend would eat it sometimes - she did like it, but her stomach made her pay for it.

That said, I'm sure there are people out there who don't like it.