PBS Wisconsin Documentaries

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Narrator

Long before pay-at-the-pump before the convenience store selling gas and before self-service there was the old-fashioned gas station. Gas stations-- everyday places-- places usually taken for granted.

Jim Draeger

Gas stations are really ordinary buildings. And I think that's what's really special about them. They're the ordinary buildings that form the backdrops to our lives.

Narrator

The coming of the automobile created a transportation revolution. And as it evolved, the ordinary gas station brought about extraordinary changes in the way we live.

Draeger

Gas stations develop innovations that become standard everywhere. They were on the forefront of changes in marketing. They're the pioneers of the commercial strip.

Narrator

Over the years, thousands of gas stations have fallen by the wayside. But a surprising number remain and each one has a story to tell. So let's "Fill 'er Up" and take a trip back in time back to the glory days of Wisconsin gas stations. Funding for "Fill 'er Up" was provided by the Wisconsin History Fund supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

At the turn of the 20th century the first cars began scaring the horses on Wisconsin roads. Early drivers bought their gas by the can at hardware stores or other shops that sold kerosene, and poured it in. Hand-cranked pumps soon began to make buying gas faster and easier. Later, the first permanent pumps with underground tanks appeared right next to the curb.

Draeger

When automobiles first emerged and they thought about dispensing gas there was nothing they could look to as a prototype. So they had to invent an entirely new type of building that functioned in an entirely new way. The first stations were crudely slapped together affairs just tin roofs and wood sides, real shack-like buildings. When the car is introduced into the city the major residential streets, the boulevards end up becoming commercial streets.

And the gas stations are the first buildings that break that back of residential house-after-house-after-house. They become the pioneers of the commercial strip. And as a result, these crude shacks are being erected next to people's houses. And there's a huge push back from people in neighborhoods about these dirty, smelly, ugly-looking buildings being inserted into their neighborhoods.

Narrator

Gasoline retailers responded by building stations that looked like little houses, and fit into the neighborhood.

Draeger

They looked like the popular house types of the time. They're bungalows and craftsman buildings period revival styles like tutor design. The stone and brick. Substantial looking buildings.

Narrator

When Lester Proksch first opened this cottage-style filling station in 1933 he lived in the rooms on the second floor. The owner would come down in the morning and open up his shop. That's how it was operated. The brick work is rather unique.

It's very interesting to see how they went around the door moldings and how they went around the ends of the buildings. And then, if you look from the southern exposure where they used all different formations of how they put the bricks in. The corners were all chiseled out by hand. If they were to erect a building like this now it would be very, very costly because it would be so time consuming to do what they did.

To see one of the last operating house-type filling stations you can travel to Platteville where Tom Nodorft and his father Burt have run this bungalow-style station since 1967. People stop every day and take pictures. I mean, people from out of town they just come across this and they buy gas and take a picture because they can't believe that it's still going the way it is. With being close to the university there's a lot of traffic and it attracts quite a bit of attention.

One thing I've always noticed-- is that the families will follow each other around. There's been people here with the university and then their son bought gas here. And then the son got married, and the family buys gas here. It's the cheapest, and it's very friendly.

Nordoft

We do have a pretty good cross-section of people that come in, from young to old mostly on the older side. Twenty-five, right? Yep. There you go.

Thanks. Most people come in, you know what their first name is because you see them a couple times a week. Take care. People like that.

Sometimes you don't get to know people until they write a check. Once they write you a check, you know what their name is. Mm-mm. Have a good day.

Good-bye. Thank you. Thank you. It says "fat-free," look right on it.

Fat-free! Can't beat it.

Draeger

It's really apparent when you look at early gas stations that there's a really volatile period in the teens and '20s as they're experimenting with different forms and different styles, they're just really groping. Architects thought that if you designed a really beautiful gas station it's beauty would draw the motorist. They were designed to look like civic monuments or they were designed to look like suburban houses. But the retailer has a completely different conception.

For the retailer, they should be screaming at the people driving down the street.

Narrator

In Monroe, Pure Oil, a national company built this house-type station with a design developed by architect Carl Peterson in the 1920s.

Draeger

He develops a house-type station that has a blue tile roof and is very domestic looking. A little, round arched front door a bay window, shutters, window boxes. He wanted a station that comforted the neighbors by looking house-like in its form and fitting into that residential fabric. But he also wanted a building that would stand out that would have some pop to it that you'd see as you're passing by in your car.

So, the form gave it that level of comfort but the blue roof gave it the flash and the pop that made it marketable.

Narrator

This former Pure Oil station in La Crosse shows some of the changes brought about by the hard times of the great depression. To bring in more income companies began adding service bays to the sides of their stations turning them from filling stations into service stations.

Draeger

Before that, the chains had not wanted to get involved in the servicing of vehicles because they thought, "It's just gonna bring bad will. Somebody's going to be unhappy with their service job and we might lose a customer doing that." But as gas retailing got more competitive in the 1930s. It forced all of these large corporate oil chains into the servicing of vehicles. They added service bays onto the design of their stations.

Narrator

With cheaper cars better roads, and more leisure time tourists began wending their way to northern Wisconsin. And gas stations featured designs to entice the vacationing traveler. North of Tomahawk, on the old Highway 51 Phil Kilinski built this windmill-shaped station as part of Phil's Lake Nokomis Resort.

Draeger

Buildings like this grew out of the emergence of consumer psychology. Marketers are trying to figure out what are the triggers that cause people to buy, to consume things.

Narrator

Today, the station continues to draw people off the road this time, in its new life as the Windmill Ice Cream Shop. So the building acts as a three-dimensional billboard advertising the business. And it's the fantasy nature of the design that kind of exotic feeling of the windmill that attracts people and gets them to stop. Further up Highway 51 in Hazelhurst Harry Klippel built this log cabin filling station in 1936 that sent a message to weary travelers.

Draeger

They're saying to the people driving by "If you're on vacation, you're already here." "Your vacation's begun." So, they're giving you the kind of homey log cabin. They're connecting it to the larger mythos of the rugged pioneer and the spirit of adventure and outdoorsmanship, and connecting it with things that people already have warm feelings about. And they're using that as a marketing device to try to get you to stop.

Narrator

Next to the old mill in Cedarburg stands one of the few remaining examples of a Wadham's pagoda gas station a reminder of a time when many considered driving itself an exotic adventure.

Draeger

Wadham was an independent oil company based in the Milwaukee region that got into the gas station business in the late teens and early 1920s. Wadhams was a real innovator. Their major innovation was trying to find a new iconic imagery for gas stations.

Narrator

To create the eye-catching new design Wadhams turned to Milwaukee architect Alexander Eschweiler. For inspiration, Eschweiler looked to the far east creating a pioneering, Japanese-influenced pagoda a design made popular during the World's Fairs in Chicago and St. Louis around the turn of the 20th century.

Draeger

Eschweiler's capturing that public yearning for a greater sense of adventure by taking that Fair architecture and transplanting it into a commercial environment. In the 1920s up until the mid-30s they built, in the region, over a hundred of these pagoda gas stations. Today, very few of them stand. There are just a handful of these stations left.

Kay Walters

My dad was William Schnabel. Everybody called him "Billy." In 1926, he built the building. It was called Billy's Service Station. He made his own hoist.

And he hung a tire on there for me to swing on. So, I used to play on that as a child. I just think it's a great piece of architecture and that it should be preserved. I take great pride in it.

Draeger

Eschweiler was savvy to recognize that the way that people experience buildings was different when they were in a car. He scaled the design to be read from the automobile. The size of the roof and the kind of eye-grabbing eye candy-like design is meant to appeal to people who are driving at automotive speed. It also tied into a sense of adventure and a sense of exotica.

It made the gas station a destination in itself.

Paula Luba

I grew up in West Allis, went to West Allis Central. And there was a Wadhams Oil and Grease station right on the corner of 76th Street and National. When I was a kid, my dad would call us and let us know he was going to get gas because we'd all pile into the car to go to the little pagoda. It was just so unusual.

That was the draw. The little red tile roof. It was a just a cute, little unusual building. It was unlike anything else around.

It stuck out like a sore thumb.

Narrator

The city of West Allis preserved this Wadhams station as a tribute to Frank Seneca, its popular owner and also its place in automotive history.

Draeger

Wadhams became the prototype for most of the roadside architecture that we see today. When we think of Kentucky Fried Chicken and the McDonald's golden arches these kind of iconic roadside buildings all have their start with Wadham's pagoda design.

Loren Nelson

It's a 1928 Chevy.

Narrator

In Independence, Loren Nelson restored this 1931 Texaco station back to its former glory.

Nelson

It had been a body shop a bunch of different things. About ten years ago, we revamped it back into mechanical repair and auto sales. Turned into more of a passion than a business. I mean, that's just what it has.

We did a '50s concept. My wife actually bought the pumps for our anniversary when we first bought the place. She knew I had everything else, revamped everything. But I didn't have the pumps yet.

About five times a week somebody pulls in wants to put on gas. They look up and see that it's 32 or 35 cents and realize that they're just for show. And then they embarrassingly pull out. The sign was here when we bought the place.

It was painted over. It was black. And it had a body shop name or something on it. We stripped the paint off and it was the original Texaco sign under it.

The post is called a banjo post. Which is, very few of them left. It was bought as a franchise from Texaco. And it basically run as a Texaco station selling Texaco petroleum up into the '70s.

I know they were still pumping gas in 1975 because I was a young gentlemen from around town. And I actually worked here in 1975 pumping gas for a little bit for a guy that had it. The stalls were basically used for washing cars, and things like that. A lot of the repair was done outside.

They actually, years ago would have a hoist that was outside. And this is of the station, in the early '40s. The lefthand side is the original structure. The right side is the new bays that they had put on of course, for expansion.

We've got a lot of pictures of some of the guys that used to own the station or rented the station over the years. We've got their pictures up. And one old fellow's name was "Skinny" and he used have a very unique Harley Davidson. I get people that stop from all parts of the United States.

And the neat thing is just about everyone of them can remember an old Texaco station or an old gas station that they may have worked at or something their dad or their grandpa may have had. And it just makes for a lot of nice stories. We leave the frontage open on weekends and at night. One of the reasons we leave it open is a lot of people with older cars will pull in and they'll just take snaps of their cars.

because they've got cars from the '30s, '40s and '50s. It's a unique place for them to take a picture of the car because this place is something that's back in time. When you drive through town a lot of people will make the comment about they thought they were in a time warp. The site would be a gorgeous site for any prosperous business but I think it's important that it's preserved on what it used to be.

There.

Narrator

Increased competition during the great depression set the stage for an entirely new, modern station design called the "oblong box."

Draeger

Gas stations in this time become very systematic in the way they're designed and the way they're laid out as they're looking at all of the aspects that generate profit in a station whether it's the set-back of the station on the lot where the service bays are located how the entrance is located, what the layout of the interior of the station is what kind of products they dispense how those products are colored where the logo is shown the height of the lettering on the signs and how far that can be read from a vehicle that's passing by how the station is lit at night. All of those variables are very scientifically studied and thought out in the 1930s. To generate the most profitable possible designs.

Narrator

This station in Minocqua, now a bicycle shop shows the transition to the modern service station.

Draeger

The style of this station has a foot in both worlds. The homey, domestic station of the 1920s era and the more modern station of the 1930s and '40s. It still has the domestic-style windows in the station but it has the kind of angularity and hard surfaces and modern form that stations of the 1930s and '40s have. So, you're seeing the blending here of this old traditional house-form style and the more modern building emerging out of it.

By the late 1930s, they become very square, rectangular boxes built out of very, very modern-looking materials.

Narrator

A model of efficiency, the box-like design improved the level of customer service a station could provide.

Draeger

They wanted to provide excellent service. So the corner window becomes a trademark feature of the box-type station. Improving the visibility to have the attendant on the pump island by the time the car has come to a stop. They also realized that that's great marketing space.

They can put display materials inside that glass window and improve the marketability of all those accessories as well. The box-type station is beautifully suited to gas retailing. You can tell that because that box-type station was born in the early 1930s and lasts as long as the full-service station does with very little change. Minor modifications are made as they kind of tweak the design.

But essentially, the form exists as long as full-service stations.

Narrator

Full service gas stations ran into big trouble in the 1970s. Interruptions to the flow of oil from the Middle East led to shortages of gas and higher prices. To save a few cents, more people began pumping their own gas cutting into the profits of full-service stations. At the same time, cars grew more complicated to fix and good mechanics became more expensive.

And in 1988, widespread underground pollution led to a new law requiring all stations to upgrade their tanks. An expense that drove many stations out of the business. Of those that remained, some quit the repair business and turned the garage into a convenience store. Other stations quit the gas business and moved strictly to service.

Parman's, a popular neighborhood station on Madison's west side pulled its gas pumps in 1998.

Clayton Parman

Our father started this business in 1941.

Narrator

At its grand opening in 1941 Clayton Parman sold gasoline for 15.9 cents and eventually employed his two sons, Keith and Clayton, Jr. He retired in '62. And my brother and myself have been doing it since. I think one of the special things was working with our father for quiet a few years.

He was quite a guy. He used to have a saying, "Meet them at the pumps." So when you heard that bell, you better be heading that way. When we were done with gas and cleaning the windshield and windows we'd ask them if they would like the oil or radiator checked, or whatever. We always had air hoses out by the island there.

And if they wanted their tires checked, we checked those. Parman's now relies entirely on repairs but maintains the old-fashioned service and social atmosphere of a traditional gas station. We have quite a group of people that come in. Some good, you know.

( laughter )

Man

We're part of the lounge lizards that come down here for coffee and doughnuts.

Charlie Larkin

Meet with a lot of people down here. We discuss everything or cuss or discuss everything from soup to nuts. Right, yeah. We enjoy it.

Sports, what have you. Once in a while, if it gets too crowded back here-- it's a little problem-- But they usually move on into the front office.

Charlie

Shall we go into the sun room and get out of the way? They've been awful good to the rest of us old geezers putting up with us as we sit here and tell all kinds of stories and all kinds of fabrications, whatever. It's a great place. My wife asks me, "What do you fellows talk about down there?" You name it, that's what we talk about.

Anything and everything. You just don't find this kind of gas station anymore.

Narrator

Most of the old-fashioned gas stations are gone now. But if you look around a handful of stations remain, often converted to another use reminders of where we've been and how we got here. In Janesville this convenience store was built to resemble the 1925 filling station preserved on a corner of the lot. When the little station stopped selling gas in 1977 there were some sad customers.

One particular lady, she sat and cried for 25 minutes. She couldn't bear to leave. So I talked to her, you know. She said, "I've been coming here for over 50 years.

Where will I go?" I recommended a fellow up the hill. In Milwaukee, the Sherman Park neighborhood saved a crumbling gas station from the wrecking ball converting it into a coffee shop named "Sherman Perk."

Cliff Lepke

I saw what happened at other places where service stations had been torn down. And what you end up with is an abandoned lot. I just went, it should be brought back. It should have some use in our neighborhood.

I saw a great potential in this spot. Instead of an eyesore I saw something that could be actually beautiful. A gem. Something that was part of the neighborhood's heritage.

Bob Olin

My wife and I spoke. And having raised our family here we thought it would be a good addition to the neighborhood. We were told that there were different grant programs we might qualify for. So we naively said sure, we'd like to pursue this.

Narrator

The restored station continues on as a gathering place, pumping out coffee, tea and other drinks for a grateful neighborhood.

Lepke

It becomes the free space in our neighborhood where everyone can get together. And I think that's just absolutely fantastic because it's something this neighborhood needed.

Narrator

The City of Milwaukee declared the Sherman Perk building a local historic landmark joining nearly 70 other Wisconsin gas stations now listed on local, state and national registers of historic places. It's a funny notion to think that something as humble as a gas station could be historically important but gas stations are symbols of the automobile age. For the 20th century they're what the railroad depot is to the 19th century. So, when we save an old gas station we save the stories that help us understand that world and what it once was like in order to understand better how it is now.

Funding for "Fill 'er Up" was provided by the Wisconsin History Fund; supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.