Do You Know This Building?
 Answers: 1. c) Holyoke; 2.c) 1927; 3.b) house with canopy This wood frame building has walls of pressed steel siding in a brick pattern. The hipped roof extends over the driveway to the gasoline pump area, supported by two square columns also clad in brick-patterned pressed steel siding. The pumps are true to the time period, although not original. The interior, consisting of one main room with a small restroom in the corner, is also finished in pressed metal—alternating squares in a floral motif. Original furnishings include a desk, wooden cabinet, and cash register. Purchased in local lumber yards or ordered from catalog supply firms, pressed steel siding in patterns imitating brick and stone gained popularity in the early part of the 20th century. The moderate price, easy installation and low maintenance made it a popular wall cladding for commercial buildings. Pressed metal siding was widely used across Colorado as both an original exterior cladding and as a replacement material. The material was not maintenance-free—it needed regular painting to prevent rusting and damaged sheets were also difficult to repair. By the late 1930s, newer materials like rolled and sheet asphalt and asbestos increasingly stole the market from pressed metal. This is the best known surviving Colorado example of the use of pressed metal siding in a gas station. Although pressed metal ceilings are common in commercial buildings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its use as an interior wall treatment is unusual. Colorado’s first gas stations were nothing more than curbside pumps in front of garages, stables and hardware stores. As the number of automobiles increased, off-street filling stations, often little more than a shed, were built to dispense gasoline with greater ease and safety. Toward the end of the 1910s and the beginning of the 1920s, gas stations began to take on a distinguishing architectural form. Most stations offered weather protection for the filling area by means of a canopy which extended from the front of the office across the driveway to the pumps. Oil companies constructed this “house with canopy” form extensively in Colorado throughout the 1920s. Its distinctive form was an immediately identifiable element in the commercial roadside landscape. Automobile services, such as light repair and lubrication, became increasingly important in the 1930s and the house with canopy form fell out of favor, replaced with newer stations that contained service bays. This is an extremely rare intact example. Like so many other businesses that offered retail and wholesale fuel and oil, it was called an “oil station” rather than a “gas station” because gasoline made up only a part of their total sales. Reimer-Smith sold kerosene, gasoline, and a complete line of motor oils and greases. The station served the petroleum needs of the small town of Holyoke and its surrounding agricultural area by providing gasoline for vehicles, and kerosene for home lighting, heating and cooking. Reimer-Smith purchased its petroleum in bulk from a refinery in Ohio, receiving the product by railroad and delivering bulk quantities by truck to area farms. Sales of gasoline and oil to individual motorists occurred at the station. Over the years the Reimer-Smith Station distributed a variety of brands of gasoline and lubricants, including Texaco, Sinclair and Frontier. The station closed in 1991 and in 1998 the building was offered to the Phillips County Historical Society with the stipulation that it be removed from its original site. The society relocated the station to the Phillips County Museum property, and it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. |
