“This is a service station. We offer service. There’s no higher purpose”*…
- This quaint art deco Tower Conoco Station and U-Drop Inn Cafe in Shamrock, Texas, was one of the first businesses the tiny panhandle town built along Route 66, in 1936. Built by architect Joseph Barry, it’s now owned by the city and used as a visitor’s center. (CLINTON STEEDS VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
Gas stations are rarely known for their aesthetics. Looking like a truck stop is no compliment for a work of architecture. It hasn’t always been so: In the early days of American car culture, gas stations were designed with enough architectural flamboyance to lure customers off the highway. As driving has become an ingrained way of life, though, that extra design effort has fallen by the wayside. Though in general we’re not a huge fan of city driving, as long as people continue to rely on cars, there will have to be places to fuel up. Why make car infrastructure more of a blight on the landscape than it already is?
Some of the best-known architects of our time have set their sights on gas station architecture, from midcentury icons like Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, to Jean Prouvé to Norman Foster. In a new book from Architizer founder Marc Kushner, The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings, Kushner devotes an entire section to this car-centic architecture that outclasses the barren Shell stations of today by a mile…
This gas station in Matúškovo, Slovakia, built in 2011 by Atelier SAD, looks like a spacecraft. The columns supporting the concrete overhang also serve as drainage pipes. (TOMAS SOUCEK)
Fill ‘er up at “9 Gorgeous Gas Stations Throughout History.”
* “Socrates” (Nick Nolte), a gas station attendant in Peaceful Warrior
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As we opt for unleaded, we might recall that it was on this date in 1934 that Britain introduced the first Driver’s Test for licensing. Optional until 1935 (so as to avoid a crush at the test centers), the new requirement, enacted with the Highway Code of 1934, followed a year in which cars on the road topped 1 million in the U.K. and road deaths reached 7,300. In an effort to calm motorists made nervous by the new requirement, Ford produced a short, reassuring film, narrated by motor racer and land speed record holder Sir Malcolm Campbell:
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