While driving home one gloomy day, I decided to explore Highway US 80 as it passes through west Jackson. I spotted an old gasoline station at the corner of Gallatin and 80 in Jackson. The frontage road that runs right in front is called Oklahoma Street. The building has been greatly modified, but the curved front and horizontal stripes caught my eye. It still had elements of mid-century modernism.
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| MS 182, Starkville (provided by Thomas Rossell) |
I contacted Thomas Rossell, who has written about classic 1930s-1940s gasoline stations in the
Preservation Mississippi blog. He responded that he was not certain about this particular station. "The heavy double lines look like Pan-Am/ Amoco designs, but in the example I attached you can see that the lines break downward at the corners."
These Amoco or Pan Am stations once dotted the south, but many have been demolished. Many others have been reused or heavily modified, but you can still detect their architectural elements.
Here is an example I photographed in Hazelhurst, now being used as a title loan store.
If you are interested in the topic, look at
Preservation Mississippi and use the search tool. Highly recommended!
1 comment:
Well, you two (you and Thomas Rosell) know how to send me down a rabbit hole. All I could turn up for the location in the newspaper archives was Madison Truck and Equipment Co., which relocated to So. Gallatin and Highway 80 in 1946 and were there for 4 years until it became Clinton Auto Sales. However, given there were 3 other corners, who is to say who was where?
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