The American Gas Station is a nostalgic history of the service station and the American car culture it helped create. An exceptional chronicle of the birth of roadside architecture, the development of gasoline pumps, corporate trademarks, and gas station memorabilia. Published 1999
From the fly leaf: "The gas station occupies a prominent position along the grand highway that is American history.
Once upon a time, gasoline was poured by hand into your Model T. By the 1950s, service stations were manned by teams of attendants that rushed forth at the sound of the bell to wipe your car's windows and check the oil. In the 1980s, self-service became the rule at all but a few old-fashioned stations.
Along the way, gas stations have promoted themselves in images that ingrained in American mythology: Sony's red neon Pegasus, Texaco's Stay, Phillips 66 named after US Route 66, and the numerous giveaway trinkets, stickers, toys, games, and radio antenna pennants that have decorated our cars.
The American Gas Station is a history of the service station and the American car culture it helped create. This is the chronicle of the birth of roadside architecture, the development of gasoline pumps, corporate trademarks, and gas station
memorabilia, which has become the center of vast Americana collector interest.
Here are more than 200 historical and current B&W and color photographs, advertisements, architectural floorplan renderings, original trademark designs, collections of memorabilia and more....
Included are portraits of and interviews with old-time gas station owners talking of the changes that have taken place to force the closing of the mom and pop full-service stations, the new modernized corporate self-service stations and the effect those changes have had on all of our lives."
