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Fill 'er Up by Daniel Vieyra Soft Cover 1979 Architectural history of Gas Stns
Filler Up by Daniel Vieyra Soft Cover 1979 111 Pages
During this century, the widespread adoption of the automobile has brought radical changes to the American environment. As a result, our surroundings can no longer be referred to as landscape, but more accurately should be termed "carscape" or "motorscape." The emergence of a drive-in culture -diners, motels, roadside stands, drive-in movies and franchise food establishments-reflects the altered life-styles the automobile has created. Ironically, however, this culture, which so affects our daily lives, is taken very much for granted.
The gas station, the first structure built in response to the automobile, is undoubtedly the most widespread type of commercial building in America, and yet it is also the most ignored. Its very ubiquity allows the motorist to screen out its image. The gas station embodies architectural and cultural dimensions that most of us tend to overlook. to recent years it has been noted that "the history of architecture must not be confined to masterpieces. . . . The subject is much bigger and comprises all that man has done . . . to shape the environment." Perhaps an examination of the gas station will transform its dubious perception by the motorist into an appreciation of its imagery.
The gas station is one of the few building types that has been standardized and distributed across the entire country. It has become a sophisticated reflection of American ideals as viewed by large oil companies. At the same time, through community control and regulation of commercial buildings (controls often aimed at the gas station in particular ), the service station has projected images that the communities themselves deem desirable. Echoing larger movements in architecture, gas stations are often the only examples of current design trends in areas isolated from the architectural mainstream.
The gas station, as one of the most important building types of our drive-in culture, requires its own unique method of analysis. The traditional methods of the art historian might lend themselves to the study of a Gothic cathedral or a Renaissance-inspired Stanford White townhouse. But whether a strictly chronological examination or a detailed stylistic analysis-such methods are not appropriate to our study of American gas stations, for they would in many ways limit our understanding of this building type. For a strictly chronological examination to be successful, there must be a clear logical development in terms of the building's function and style. There has been, however, no functional evolution of the gas station, but rather a cyclical reappearance of functional developments. Nor did station design evolve through a series of stylistic themes. A study that relied on these traits would become disjointed and encyclopedic, destroying the fun of looking at gas stations.
Analyses along the lines of those applied to traditional architectural styles would place unfair standards on this building type. The gas station was rarely an architectural trend-setter. Geared to the fast-moving traveler, its details were either crude or nonexistent; creating a single effect or image was of utmost importance. Considering the gas station in the same terms as high-style architecture would be to examine it from a distorted perspective.
One of the first to recognize the potential importance of our roadside architecture was Henry-Russell Hitchcock, who in 1936 said, "The combination of strict functionalism and bold symbolism in the best roadside stands provides, perhaps, the most encouraging sign for the architecture of the mid-twentieth century." Not until the 1960s did architects and theorists deal with the importance of the gas station and other drive-in buildings in a comprehensive manner.
Using the drive-in culture as a point of departure, architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Stephen Izenour developed the concepts of "architecture as symbol" and the "architecture of communication." In contrast to the more traditional, pedestrian-oriented "architecture of space and form," such buildings are capable of conveying meaning, of making for example an instantly recognizable statement to the motorist as he speeds past. These architects and their followers contend that an examination of popular culture could make our architecture more responsive to the changing needs of people in an auto-oriented environment.
Charles Moore acknowledged the importance of roadside building in his plea for an "architecture of inclusion." David Gehbard has played a vital role in relating these current architectural theories to the histories of roadside building types.
Accepting the premise that "symbol dominates space," it becomes evident that gas stations must be examined in terms of the images or symbols that they convey to the motorist. Building on this solid theoretical foundation, this book attempts a comprehensive examination not only of the functional history of the American gasoline station but of the various images the station has projected throughout its colorful history.
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