Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums Showcase and Stories, Petroliana Texaco Station Restoration

Hi,

This is a bit of a placeholder post. I'll be adding pics as they become available.

Short story: A liquor store a few blocks from my place is restoring a 1928 Texaco that's attached to it. They just demoed the concrete blocks filling the garage bays today. Tomorrow, I'll be taking pictures of the newly exposed and still working garage doors for the National Historic Register application we're working on.

The liquor store used to have a small office in the back. The guy who rented it in '52? Al Neuharth. Best known lately as the founder of USA Today.

Here's the station in the early 30s.

BTW: I did post this pic a year or two back, trying to find out if this was a pre-Walter Teague corporate look.

Very interesting. I'm already looking forward to the photographs and watching the station come together.

The style of the station is not a Teague design. I would guess it was built before the Teague standardization. However, this picture does show the wood grain Texaco signs being used. Those tend to show up on non Teague stations in the late 30s.

More proof of the woodgrain signs!

Wood grain signs?

It's the signs above the window and the garage doors. They are metal porcelain signs that look like dark stained wood signs. There was a post on them at one time.

I'm wondering if they're really the wood grain signs talked about after blowing te photo up some. Maybe over the window between the doors. Any way the photo was taken around 1934 or later because of the texaco/havoline cans.

Doug

Thanks Dave.

The building dates to '28. This photo dates to 1935, I think. It was an ad in some publication or another.

Aside from demolishing the wall between the two restrooms and removing the plumbing, the interior is remarkably intact. There's a staircase to a lower level under the garage, where the pillars for the vehicle lifts are still in place, and the floor mounts for the hydraulics are still in place. There's a huge 10'x12' skylight over the service bays that will be replaced. Shoot, there's still a piece of pipe with rings on it over the doorway between the service and wash bays that I assume they used to hang a curtain. It is now referred to as 'the chin-up bar'.

The sales office is going to be a wine tasting room with bar, and the garage doors are going to be restored and placed behind fixed plate glass. The wine's going to be in the garage area, and the two wash bays on the far east side (behind the near pump) will be a walk-in beer cooler.

The garage doors will stay operational so that on special occasions (like say an evening wine tasting), they can be opened up, showing off the restored interior.

Very cool Rich. Thanks for the thread and I await the other images you may add to it as it rolls along. I like restorations!Cheers!

Jamie:do you know anything about the sign above the word TEXACO
on the front of the station--just curious
DSF

I think this picture is newer than 1935. The pumps are branded Sky Cheif which wasn't introduced until 1938.

Deacon, I sure don't. I noticed that too. Is it to small to be a 42" gasoline/motor oil sign?

As promised, here's a photo of the exterior with the garage doors re-exposed. You'll notice that a bit of concrete block is left in the 3rd bay. That's getting removed later today. I have a few other photos, but they're mostly boring stuff. Garage door hinges and so forth.

The new panels in the rightmost bay replace an opening that was cut for a fire exit. When they blocked in the bays, they had to put a fire door in the east bay, and they cut out part of the garage door to do it.

Why did they cut out those panels instead of removing the whole garage door? Because it was cheaper.

This liquor store is legendary in Sioux Falls and South Dakota.

I think it's too small for a 42" sign. I did a quick measurement from the pic I took today, and it looks like that's around a 32"-36" diameter panel, based on the ~4" headers that frame it.

I wonder if the round sign area could have been a fancy stained glass window or something of the like?
Darin