In 1963, the trip along Route 66 was marked by neon signs: Shell, Mobil, Texaco, Standard… The automobile boom had been insatiable since the 1920s and, with it, gas stations had become omnipresent. Driving to his parents’ home in Oklahoma, pop artist Ed Ruscha photographed every stop along the way. The resulting book, Twenty-six gas stationselevated prefabricated roadside structures to cultural icons. He wasn’t the only artist to see art at gas stations: their distinctive canopies and gas pumps also fascinated the century’s greatest architects, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Jean Prouvé.
It was a golden age that came and went without being recognized. Over the past three decades, more than 50,000 gas stations have closed in the United States. In 2019, Boston Consulting Group predicted, depending on how quickly the electric vehicle market takes off, that between 45 and 80 percent of the rest could be unprofitable by 2035. However, amid this potential mass extinction, it has a movement has emerged to protect the Historic buildings are emerging. California Gilmore Gas Station obtained the status of Historical-Cultural Monument in 1992. The work of Arne Jacobsen White tiled station in Denmark It is protected by a Class A listing. In 2017, the modernist Fiat Tagliero station in Eritrea became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. For every save, a new question arises: what to do with it?
“At first it was a strange decision to maintain or transform a gas station,” says Éric Gauthier, senior partner at FABG Architectes, in charge of transforming it. Esso Station by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on Nuns’ Island in Montreal. “But Mies is important,” he says. Having previously converted Buckminster Fuller’s Expo 67 dome into the Montreal Biosphere MuseumGauthier was trusted to transform the site into a community center. “I had to make decisions about how far we would go to be faithful to the exact furniture,” Gauthier says, “or be faithful to the larger idea of a transparent building, almost like a temple, and try to do more Mies than Miés.”
He removed the gas station paraphernalia from the two rooms, creating spaces where teenagers and seniors could host dances, games and conferences. To avoid unsightly additions, he installed geothermal energy wells beneath the asphalt surrounds and built stainless steel “gas pumps” outside, which are actually intake and exhaust fans. Gauthier took “some artistic liberties” with the lighting, extending the long fluorescent lights from the canopy to the interior areas. “We wanted to simplify and get back to the abstract essence of the matter,” he says.
The first gas stations are a little more kitsch than the elegant Mies design of the 1960s. In the 1920s and 1930s, local authorities objected to the proliferation of makeshift gas shacks and “would only allow a new gas station if it met certain standards.” aesthetics,” says Thomas Vanhaute, author of Service stations: an illustrated history. This gave rise to a large number of Renaissance style gas stations, including the “English Cottage” style. Pure Oil’s cottages had blue-tiled roofs, one of which now houses Peach Street Books in Virginia, while Phillips 66 opted for an imitation Tudor style. Fewer than 100 of Phillips’ 66 cabins remain, converted into everything from hair salons to morgue “storage” facilities.
With the advent of modernism, designers eagerly adopted movements from the Streamline Moderne of the 1930s to the space-age Googie style, reminiscent of boomerangs and flying saucers. The axiom of “form follows function” led to decidedly un-lodge-like structures: all pumps, plinths and canopies, supported by “mushroom” columns. The archetypal design is known as the “oblong box,” a low enamel-clad building with a glass façade. A station of this style is preserved in Hamburg as the Erfrischungsraum snack bar.
While these very specific structures may not seem like prime candidates for adaptive reuse, many have been given new life as a Starbucks drive-thru. The coffee chain’s conversion of California’s Gilmore Gas Station earned a Conservancy Preservation Award in 2018 for staying “true to its autocentric roots.” Starbucks has also revived the Flying Saucer station in Saint Louis and the hyperbolic Markham Moor services in Nottinghamshire, England. An equally dramatic station by desert modernist Albert Frey now houses the Palm Springs Visitor Centergreeting tourists with a pointed paraboloid roof.
In Wellington, New Zealand, the Brewery garage project has filled a former gas station and repair shop with tanks and fermenters. In 2011, its founders installed a 50-liter system and brewed 24 different beers in 24 weeks. The station’s original canopy protects its pallets and cases from the elements, while the former sales counter has been converted into a take-out “cellar door” with eight rotating taps for beer tasting. The building has a notable history as the workshop of Sybil Lupp, New Zealand’s first female racing driver and Jaguar specialist. “She was known for driving out of the garage in a convertible Jaguar with a mouthpiece in her hand,” says co-founder Jos Ruffell, who created the brewery’s Garagista beer in her honor. “The word was a little insulting to begin with,” Ruffell says. “It came from Enzo Ferrari: he was making fun of the British Formula 1 teams that made lighter, faster, winning cars on small budgets in small workshops in England. “That really caught our attention, as a small brewery trying to create unique beers and take on the bigger breweries.”
In Oslo, Kiosk! It also honors its history. The small cafe occupies a 1935 station that was once operated by Mobil Oil. Its tables and chairs are installed under the building’s rounded canopy, painted in pastel blues and pinks. “We used our own brand colors, but we applied them as a gas company would have done,” says Kari Anne Solfjeld Eid, who encouraged 65 local investors to rehabilitate the site in 2021. Illustrator Mari Kanstad Johnsen created a fun version of Mobil’s red Pegasus for your logo.
The old stations offer fun design elements: “We have these huge windows that you can drive a car through,” says Jack Simpson from the United Kingdom. Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds, a literary cafe by day and a live music venue by night. Royal Lobster in Los Angeles serves Maine-caught lobster rolls in a 1940s Texaco station, in front of a bright red sign that says “LOBSTER.” Artist duo Craig & Karl turned to traditional gas station branding to public art installation Here aftercovering an abandoned London station with bright stripes and arrows. summer campin Ojai, California, is a 1951 station offering home goods and custom framing. “The original wooden rolling mechanical doors are still in the back and now serve as big, beautiful windows,” says co-founder Michael Graves. “The ‘Air and Water’ sign remains, hand-painted on the front brick, in addition to all the metal sliding doors, with original hardware and antique locking devices, as well as the original tire rack, which now holds an antique canoe handmade.” A few minutes later, a similar site has become the Light and Space yoga studio.
Vanhaute’s favorite architect is Mario Bacciocchi, whose aerodynamics Agip Station In Milan, Italy, there is now the event venue Garage Italia Milano, decorated with a Ferrari 250 GTO cocktail bar and clouds of Bburago toy cars. He is also a fan of Berlin. Das Kleine Grosz Museuma gas station converted by gallerist Juerg Judin, which now displays the drawings of 1920s caricaturist George Grosz. Its patio is an oasis in the center of the city with a pond and pine trees. “To me, that’s the ideal,” Vanhaute says, “when the building is kept alive and given a new purpose in the post-automobile era.”