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Vintage roadside

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.

24636116975_dc6e9d5fec_z.jpg


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.

24268388369_92afe0812e_z.jpg


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

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Here was the Holiday Inn:

24008173824_980092ef86_o.jpg


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. :D 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.

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Thanks for looking,

Bob H.
 
Messages
13,672
Location
down south
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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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.

Flat-Top-Burger-Shop_134717.jpg
258s.jpg


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 ...:rolleyes:

24539195272_04a5585623.jpg
 
Messages
11,381
Location
Alabama
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.

Flat-Top-Burger-Shop_134717.jpg
258s.jpg


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 ...:rolleyes:

24539195272_04a5585623.jpg

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.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,763
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
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.

DSC01604.JPG


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.
 

Stearmen

I'll Lock Up
Messages
7,202
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.

DSC01604.JPG


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.
 
Messages
13,672
Location
down south
Since we're sharing the sadness.....I posted this awhile back
41e54cad85e0ca310bee07205ab79c7c.jpg

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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