100 S JEFFERSON

100 S JEFFERSON

Racine

Waterford

1930

2000,2012

gas station/service station

English Revival Styles

Stucco

Carl August Petersen

No

A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, State Historic Preservation Office.

STEEPLY PITCHED ROOF. ROUND ARCH CANOPIED ENTRANCES. PROJECTING POLYGONAL BAY WINDOW.

Architecture/History Survey of STH 20, WisDOT ID#2250-12-00, Prepared by Heritage Research (2012).

This little cottage recalls a gas-station marketing strategy that emerged in the 1920s. As the automobile took hold in the American middle class, oil companies clamored to draw motorists’ attention by using distinctive signs, colors, and buildings. Ohio’s Pure Oil Company hired architect Petersen to devise a company station style. Petersen‘s English Cottage design looked like a quaint house which he hoped would blend into nearby residential neighborhoods while also identifying this Pure Oil outlet. The cottages drew on the company’s colors: white walls and a steep, “Pure Oil blue” tiled roof. From about 1925 through the 1940s, Pure built hundreds of these stations across the country. The cottage design effectively became the logo for Pure’s brand of gasoline. Waterford’s station, with its two service bays, looks like a house, complete with hood moldings over arched entries, an oriel window, and an attached garage. (A similar station stands in Monroe, at 1323 Ninth St.)

Witzel, The American Gas Station, pp. 47-49. Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript.

Not Listed