Vintage roadside

[BobHufford]

Should I be nervous?

This gas station has been on the main drag just off the interstate for umpteen years. It recently closed and a semi-truck accidentally knocked down the awning (though I wouldn't mind if they just took that off). Today the heavy demolition equipment showed up, but no activity as of yet. I have day-dreamed of opening some sort of restaurant/bar here as it sits out in front of several motels (our original Holiday Inn was just behind it and Howard Johnson's was just to the right). That is the new Holiday Inn in the background.

What remains of the Howard Johnson (called HJ City -- it was a huge property) can be seen in the background here. It is now the Ramada Oasis.

You can see a bit of the station behind the Ho-Jo sign in this old postcard:

Here was the Holiday Inn:

On a side note. I live just north of here across I-44. Before they changed the highway interchange from a cloverleaf to a single ramp with signal lights up top (getting rid of the A and B designations of the exit number) I would tell people to take "Exit Bob H" (actually Exit 80-B to Highway H). The smaller "Exit Bob" sign would remind me where to turn. I had forgotten to take a photo of that before they changed it, but ran across this one while looking for old pics of the gas station.

Thanks for looking,

Bob H.

 

[dh66]

Cross your fingers they're just there to take the tanks out of the ground....epa regs about that stuff are pretty strict and if the facility is going to be developed into anything else they'll have to be dug out first.

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[1mach1]

I agree with Dale. I think they may just be removing the tanks. At least, I hope that's all they are doing.....

 

[BobHufford]

Dale and Harv -- I hope you are both right.

This station in Austin, TX was what inspired me to dream about making this building a restaurant / bar. We watched our local Drury Panthers capture the 2012-13 NCAA-II National Basketball Championship there while I was attending a conference with my wife and daughter.

I was thinking of playing off the gas station theme and calling it Standard Sub-Sandwich or some-such-thing. I may need to work on the wording placement on the sign though ...

 

[Bamaboots]

Dale and Harv -- I hope you are both right.

This station in Austin, TX was what inspired me to dream about making this building a restaurant / bar. We watched our local Drury Panthers capture the 2012-13 NCAA-II National Basketball Championship there while I was attending a conference with my wife and daughter.

I was thinking of playing off the gas station theme and calling it Standard Sub-Sandwich or some-such-thing. I may need to work on the wording placement on the sign though ...

Bob, years ago when I lived in TN, there was a spot in Murfreesboro, not far from the MTSU campus called the Filling Station, a restaurant/bar converted from an old gas station.

 

[BobHufford]

Nooooo ...

 

[Zombie_61]

...I was thinking of playing off the gas station theme and calling it Standard Sub-Sandwich or some-such-thing. I may need to work on the wording placement on the sign though ...

Yeah, I'd work on that. As-is, it reads as "Sub Standard Sandwich", and nobody wants that.

 

[dh66]

Bummer.

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[1mach1]

Nooooo ...

Ugh..[emoji22]

 

[BobHufford]

Went by this morning and the awning was down. Still hope for the building ...

At noon almost all was lost.

A quick drive-by on the way home shows they were still picking it apart ...

Sigh ...

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's a station of similar vintage over in the next town that's supposed to be rehabbed into a restaurant, and they're actually going to play up the gas station theme, or so the reports have said. It was built as a Socony station in 1938, and has gone thru several iterations since then -- it got the fake-brickface Mobil treatment in the early '70s, and was an Irving Oil convenience store for a while, but the idea is to reconstruct it more or less as it looked when it was built, only with a dining room where the service bays were. They had a historical consultant on site recently taking samples of the original paint, so some variation of Socony red-white-and-blue will probably be visible when it's done.

There have been a few surprises -- apparently the "historical consultants" had never seen a grease pit, and were going on in the local paper about the "mysterious cement basement" that nobody knew about.

 

[BobHufford]

Lizzie -- that is awesome! And too funny about the grease pit.

 

[BobHufford]

This one is getting saved! I remember being very nervous when they bulldozed the attached building. I do wonder how many NOS Cats Paw heels were tossed out as this used to be a shoe shop.

http://www.news-leader.com/story/en...pening-vintage-gas-station-near-otc/77112886/

 

[Stearmen]

There's a station of similar vintage over in the next town that's supposed to be rehabbed into a restaurant, and they're actually going to play up the gas station theme, or so the reports have said. It was built as a Socony station in 1938, and has gone thru several iterations since then -- it got the fake-brickface Mobil treatment in the early '70s, and was an Irving Oil convenience store for a while, but the idea is to reconstruct it more or less as it looked when it was built, only with a dining room where the service bays were. They had a historical consultant on site recently taking samples of the original paint, so some variation of Socony red-white-and-blue will probably be visible when it's done.

There have been a few surprises -- apparently the "historical consultants" had never seen a grease pit, and were going on in the local paper about the "mysterious cement basement" that nobody knew about.

I almost bought a house because it had a grease pit! My Realtor could not understand why I would want an old dirty hole in the garage.

 

[BobHufford]

The recently closed drive-in theatre in Seymour, Missouri. Our local VW club used to do a cruise-in here every year.

I was shocked to see that this building had recently burned. My wife remembers stopping for gas here when traveling to her Grandparent's "farm". It was located on old US 60 in Seymour.

 

[dh66]

Since we're sharing the sadness.....I posted this awhile back

It was down the road a bit from where I grew up. I was in the area last night and it was gone. I had kinda wondered, as it had been closed down for awhile.

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[BobHufford]

Dale -- sorry for your loss.

 

[1mach1]

Since we're sharing the sadness.....I posted this awhile back

It was down the road a bit from where I grew up. I was in the area last night and it was gone. I had kinda wondered, as it had been closed down for awhile.

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Bummer.

 

[Zombie_61]

Contrary to what the sign says, apparently not everyone loves bowling. After 60 years of business, the last bowling alley in my hometown of Whittier, California, closed in June of 2015, and this sign was taken down last week.

 

[BobHufford]

Zombie_61 -- sorry to hear that. That was an awesome sign!