Roadside Attraction: The American Gas Station Part 2, Architect Visions

During the boom in gasoline station construction that happened between the advent of mass produced cars and the Great Depression, the building type attracted the attention of architects. Below is a model of a gas station proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Buffalo, New York in 1927. The cantilevered copper-covered roof became a Wright trademark during his Usonian period, which began a good decade later.  Wright thought that gas stations, like train stations, might become social gathering places, and provided a lounge at the top level, along with the usual restrooms.  One unusual feature was that the gasoline was delivered from overhanging lines suspended from the roof.  This was intended to avoid the hazard of cars hitting the pumps, but introduced another hazard in the form of gasoline lines running overhead.  Wright's original idea, gravity-fed pumps, would have put the tanks up there too. You might think that someone has crafted a highly detailed miniature Cord L-29 roadster and Pierce Arrow sedan to go with the little station, but you'd be wrong. This model of Wright's first gas station, never built as a functioning building, is full-size, and is located inside the Buffalo Transportation Pierce Arrow Museum.

By the time Wright designed the Lindholm station below in Cloquet, MN as part of his Broadacre City scheme, the suburban model of development, fast food, and even faster stops for gas were the order of the day.  Nevertheless, Wright provided a 2nd floor lounge sheltered by his cantilevered hipped roof, and plunked a spire-like totem on the roof to echo the taller, better-integrated ones atop the stillborn Buffalo station. The signage was not designed by Wright, and is not a happy addition...

The shot below gives a better sense of the decorative patterning along the fascia and the Flash Gordon, rocket-like base of the totem. This design was, after all, produced at the dawn of the Space Age in 1956. The multiple garage doors, usually avoided by Wright, are a reminder that back in the 1950s gas stations were also service stations.

Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg* designed a predictive gas and service station for the corner of Clark and Maple in that city in 1937, and it was built the next year. Owing to low bearing capacity in the soil (it's a surprise that geotechnical reports were made for gas stations in 1937) Goldberg decided to minimize weight with floor-to-ceiling glass walls and a roof supported by twin masts and steel cables.  This simplified the foundation system and offered the added benefit of putting the retail and service operations on display.  Like other, later glass and steel Chicago buildings (those by Mies van der Rohe for example) there was a downside; the building was more expensive to heat and cool. The design, however, prompted better sales than the client had expected, probably helped by the neon sign that left no doubt about the product on offer...

The daylight shot below shows off those supporting masts in a way that the night view misses. The masts were predictive too, but not of future gas station design. Instead, rival architecture firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill used the idea of twin masts to support the roof on their similarly transparent, but enormous, main structure for Baxter International in the 1970s. Ironically, after working for Bertrand Goldberg Associates for a year, I did some space planning at this Baxter HQ in suburban Chicago, but never had any idea that the genesis for the roof supports in the glassy, spacious cafeteria where I frequently ate lunch had possibly been a humble gas station which has now sadly been replaced with a bigger, less-inventive building...

After decades of declining design quality in gas station design which paralleled suburban sprawl and also the de-emphasis on service in favor of self-service gas and junk food sales, the 21st century has brought a mini-revival in gas station architecture.  It's almost as if the designers, aware of the sales growth for hybrid cars (and predicted boom in electrics), decided to focus on show-business to increase sales of food and other products. In the case of Pops Arcadia Soda Ranch in Arcadia, Oklahoma, Elliot + Associates Architects integrated form and structure with a 100 foot cantilevered roof which covers the restaurant, soda bar and retail interior as well as sheltering the pumps...

Transparent glass walls display hundreds of soda options to the world beyond the windows, while at the roadside, the architects have elected to supplant the usual boring sign on a pole with a 66 foot tall, 4 ton bottle of soda, complete with straw emerging from the top...

The designers made the most of the giant, self-illuminating soda bottle by programming color changes into the scheme. The bottle, possibly a descendent of the totems that appeared on Wright's gas stations, introduces a bit of whimsy into the whole business of stopping for gas and refreshments.

The LED illumination is programmed to provide a light show of constantly changing hues and tones.  As advertising and tongue-in-cheek humor, the Big Bottle seems related to Pop Art (think of Claes Oldeburg's big soft hamburgers) as well as to the earlier tradition of oversized roadside attractions: ice cream stands shaped like giant milk cans, for example*.

In 2007, the same year as Pops Arcadia appeared, Boston's Office dA and LA's Johnston Marklee Architects realized their design for Helios House, a landmark station on Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles. Given the improbable assignment of recasting the gas station in environmentally-friendly terms, the design team produced a shelter made of triangular recycled stainless steel plates, integrated a rainwater collector to water the landscaping, provided 90 PV panels to reduce energy consumption, and submitted their station for LEED certification, a first. The station began by selling BP gasoline during the period when the company was trying to re-brand itself as "Beyond Petroleum", an advertising campaign environmental groups branded as "greenwashing."  This criticism began to sting in 2010, the year of BP's fatal Deepwater Horizon oil platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and of their inadequate efforts to stop the gushing oil. That year, Helios House switched from selling BP products to those produced by ARCO...

*Footnote:  For a look at an ice cream stand inside a giant milk can, and also at a giant dog made from dog tags, check our post in the Archives for May 14, 2016, "Roadside Attractions: Little Man and Big Dog in Denver."

Photo Credits:

Top:  pierce-arrow.com 

2nd & 3rd:  Marcus Nashelsky

4th:  chicagobusiness.com

5th:  bertrandgoldberg.org
6th:  wikimedia
7th:  youtube.com
8th:  route66news.com
9th:  wikimedia
10th:  pinterest.com