Even before parking lots, gas stations started cannibalizing key corners. In the ongoing project here to consider the ways our autoism shaped and deformed the urban fabric, it was interesting to see this week over at the Mill a photo of the Eldridge Block at the southeast corner of Chemeketa and Commercial. It's a view from the early 1920s of the Quackenbush Auto Supply store, which I hadn't seen before.
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| Curbside gas pump on Chemeketa at corner with Commercial Street, c.1922 (detail, WHC 2022.044.0322) |
Particularly interesting were the curbside "Red Crown" gas pumps in a configuration other than a gas station. They are in the public right-of-way, even with little curb extensions!
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| Eldridge Block, corner Chemeketa and Commercial c.1922, WHC 2022.044.0322 |
You'll recall a Union Oil station from the same period, built in 1920, at the corner of State and High, right where Epilogue Kitchen is today.
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| Union Oil gas station, c.1920-25 (detail WHC 2016.090.0001.041) |
It is in the form we recognize as a service station, with a small interior office and a covered drive-thru bay, like a modified porte-cochere, for the gas pumps. There are no curbside pumps.
Though I am not 100% certain, it looks like the pumps for Quackenbush were immediately opposite an existing filling station on the corner.
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| March 15th, 1919 |
In the Spring of 1919 Standard Oil announced a new filling station on the northeast corner of Chemeketa and Commercial. The permits were announced in May. I can't find any announcement about its opening, but by April of 1927 it shows up in a photo of a parade. It's also one of five Standard Oil service stations listed in a 1923 inventory. So it at least opened not long after the 1919 announcement. (The Goodyear sign is on the same storefront as Quackenbush had occupied. Just out of the picture is the Argo Hotel built c.1912. Travelers might be expected here.)
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| Standard Oil station across the street, April 1927 (State Archives) |
G. G. Quackenbush had been associated with Watt Shipp, and in 1917 split off a tire business and went out on his own. Four years later, just before moving into this storefront in the Eldridge block, Quackenbush had got in trouble, accused of selling less than full measures of gasoline!
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| July 22nd, 1921 |
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| July 26th, 1921 |
The charges and trial did not seem to harm the business too much, and just a couple of months later Quackenbush moved across the street and up the block, from one corner to the other.
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| September 3rd, 1921 |
He didn't last very long there, and within three years he sold the business. Maybe then problems had caught up.
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| August 14th, 1923 |
A fire might have also made things difficult.
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| January 13th, 1924 |
The gasoline brand is significant. By 1922 there were many automotive stores, dealers, and gas stations selling it.
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| December 5th, 1922 |
Though the brand name shows up earlier across the country, the big ad campaign for Red Crown Gasoline appears to have started in California in the summer of 1913. In 1911 the Feds had "trust-busted" Standard Oil. After the break-up, Standard Oil of California was the successor company out here. They refined and sold Red Crown for the West Coast Market. The first ad appeared here in Salem a year after the start in California, in 1914. And it was often advertised thereafter.
A niche publication of uncertain reliability, Petroleum Collectibles Monthly, offers this on the history of the Red Crown brand (it passes a superficial inspection and seems plausible):
Prior to the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911, all of the various Standard “divisions” then in existence sold gasoline under the brandname “Red Crown”. At that time [it] was only one of numerous picturesque trademarks then in use by the company....
Standard Oil of California was the first of the Standard companies to market gasoline on a retail level. The Standard agent in Seattle set up an impromptu gas station at the company bulk plant in 1907. Motorists lined up at the plant to fill their car with Red Crown gasoline. The company began construction of their vast West Coast network of retail service stations in 1915, the same year they registered a logo for “Red Crown Gasoline” displaying, of course, a red crown....
[However,] The Red Crown name and image was probably most closely associated with Standard Oil Company of Indiana.
So it is a little interesting to have Standard Oil Red Crown pumps on one side of the street through a retail account and a vertically-integrated, company-owned Standard Oil filling station on the other. I guess that's full coverage and horizontal integration on the street.
It is also a real moment in our autoism and economy: The branding, the national advertising, the appetite for urban real estate and space.
These curbside pumps are unusual and something to be alert for. I don't think they were long-lived; but on the other hand, perhaps because we haven't been looking for them we haven't noticed them.
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| Quorum denial nullification tactics (March 5th, 1897) |
Also! Since we are talking about the Eldridge block, and quorum denial nullification tactics were in the news this week at the Oregon Supreme Court, let's remember again the wildest episode of nullification, "Fiasco of 1897 Legislature: Eldridge Block Den of Prostitution and Evil!"
1 comment:
It appears that G G Quackenbush did run into financial problems and relocated to California. A daughter, Dorothy Quackenbush, later known as Wanda McKay, was a model and actress. Here's an ad for Chesterfield cigarettes from 1939! (This is all a little tentative, however, and I did not confirm all the details.)
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