Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums Showcase and Stories, Petroliana COTM: Richfield company of the month 4-05

Here's something that would be great to own. It's called "Modern Speed" and was created by sculptor Finn Froelich. Richfield station on Redondo Blvd, Los Angeles. May 24, 1926.
Sure would be the centerpiece of your collection. http://img141.echo.cx/my.php?image=richfieldracerredondoblvd19264.png

I bought this Richfield Racer monument a few years ago from a sculptor in Utah named Jeff Decker, he's fairly famous now, as a bronze artist. He brought it from So-Cal when he moved to Utah in the early 90's. It was a really great piece, I wish I'd kept it. I sold it to our friend Dominico Idoni
(Before I knew his History)




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Good Luck on the Hunt

Lance / The Pogo Man

Way cool lance, what kind of material was that in? Elden

These simulated marble monuments were also duplicated as gas pump globes. The "race car" was regular grade and the "airplane" version was Ethyl. If you can get hold of a March 1995 issue of "Check The Oil" mag, there is an excellent article on these. You may also check out my "Remember When..." article in March's section of Showcase. http://www.oldgas.com/shoptalk/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000992.html

Can't showcase a company without a gobe. 15" metal body.

It was made from a plaster of paris type material, finished it a high luster, faux marble finsish. There were 2 sizes of these, the smaller faux marble ones that were placed at the stations, and then the large bronze ones which were put along the highways to signal an upcoming station. The large ones were so massive that the entire foundry operation was moved from town to town, and the monuments cast as close to the permanent locations as possible, so that the huge monuments didn't have to be moved very far. After I sold the mine, I was contaced by people at Miller Offenhauser, they heard I had one and wanted it for their private museum, I wish they would have wound up with it, hard to say where its at now...........

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Good Luck on the Hunt
Lance / The Pogo Man

15" lens I have

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A smaller version of the race car and an airplane were used on top of gaspumps about 1929. The BOWSER 300 pumps were inclosed in a sheetmetal housing to resemble a square pilar. The station building also had a fancy diecut airplane weather vane on the West Coast. Hope someone will post pictures of the tall towers with the neon letters that mail planes used as referance points up & down the West Coast.
db

Author Dave Cole did extensive research and wrote about the Richfield "Beacon" towers. Dave also writes a regular column for Check the Oil Magazine. He lives in Santa Maria 30 miles to the north of me and I am visiting with him tomorrow to scan some photos for my various historical research projects. I'd have Dave email me some pictures but he is a non-computer guy. In fact, he publishes a monthly Lincoln-Zephyr magazine and writes for Check the Oil, all on an old fashioned manual typewriter.

He has some very nice pictures of the stations from the Cal-Trans photo archives which I will duplicate and post so you can see them. The stations and the towers were quite impressive.

Here are the photos of the Richfield tower in Santa Maria California. I will have to give you the historical details on these airplane signal towers later, but for now you can enjoy the photos.







Note the oil derricks as well. Santa Maria had one of the most productive oil fields in the country.

The Racing Statue and The Beacon Towers

The story of the Richfield Beacon Stations and Towers represent an important aspect of the early history of the Richfield Company. Richfield was established in 1915 by the merger of two small oil companies in Los Angeles, CA. They entered a competitive marketplace that was dominated by the “Big 4” of the oil industry, Standard, Shell, Associated and Union.

One of the ways that they chose to compete was to develop a more powerful gasoline. They were able to develop a gasoline with an octane rating of 75 which at that time was quite high.. To promote this more powerful gasoline they offered it to race car drivers around the LA area and by 1921 they were supplying their products for the racers at the Indianapolis 500. From 1921 to 1932 cars using Richfield gasoline took the top five places at Indy, which spawned there phrase, “Gasoline of Power”.

To celebrate this success a statue was commissioned in 1926 and created by sculptor Finn Haakon Frolich. This large statue featured a dirt track racer sliding through a turn and was used as a monument at various Richfield stations to commemorate their racing successes. A scaled version of this same statue was used on top of the pumps at the Beacon stations, along with a sculpture of an airplane in flight, which symbolized Richfield’s role in aviation fuel. These small statues were incorporated in to covers that sat over modified Bowser Exacto Sentry clock face pumps.

These statues were one of may of the minute and impressive details that were used on the Beacon stations. In California these stations celebrated the popular Spanish and Mission revival styles that were being widely visited throughout the twenties.

The Beacon towers served a dual purpose. Rising 125 feet in the area the featured eight foot tall red neon letters spelling out Richfield. The neon would later be changed to blue to reflect the Richfield colors. At the top of the towers were beacon lights to guide pilots flying along the coast from California to Washington. At the time flying was done by sight and these beacons were intended to become an essential part of navigation.

On the ground, the towers were visible from great distances. They would guide the motorist to the comfort of these elaborately designed service stations and the well recognized Richfield brand. Richfield’s intent was to design and locate these stations in such a way that other services could be built surrounding the station, thus creating a small service town. Unfortunately these stations came online just as the Great Depression hit and few of these were fully develop. In the collapse of excess of the Roaring 20’s these beautifully crafted stations would soon become obsolete.

The station in Santa Maria, California is one of the few exceptions where other services were built. At the time when the Santa Maria station was built it was located well south of the main part of downtown Santa Maria and somewhat off the beaten path. However good fortune or great foresight, put the station right on the route of the soon to be relocated highway and it was soon very visible to the Highway 101 traveler.

Seizing this opportunity a motor court and diner will built next to the station. This station and it’s companion tower would be one of the longer surviving of the beacon locations. The tower stood until 1971.

Here is a 15" BLUE STREAK sgl lens from RICHFIELD.

db

Heres an original Richfield grease decal


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Hubba: GAS GEEK , OIL FREAK and humble moderator

matchbook, not actual size.

[img]http://hometown.aol.com/ethancarman/mypumps/rich[/img]

happy 4/20
Ethan

Here's a link to more information on the Beacon towers sent to me by Robert Stephens of Australia.

http://www.livinggoldpress.com/rich.htm

Here's a link to Robert's website too.

http://silverstone.fortunecity.com/jaguar/274/