A Shell of it's Former Self

This 1930 fueling station is the last of it's kind. After decades of paint jobs, habitation, and abandonment it's been restored to serve as a monument to a bygone era.

HISTORY & CRAFT

9/13/20264 min read

Built in 1930 alongside six others, this Shell station is the lone survivor. It was constructed for a purpose that should be revisited as a whole: brand recognition through literalism. If you wanted to find Shell, you simply looked for the building shaped like one. There was little room for confusion.

Shell Shaped Shell Fill Station Patent Design

Shell Shaped Shell Filling Station Circa 1940

1935 World's Fair San Diego Shell Building

Richard Petty's Road Runner at Bowman Gray Stadium

By 1935, the concept had inspired the company and made its way far beyond Winston-Salem. At the California-Pacific International Exposition in San Diego, Shell constructed an enormous shell-shaped building to serve as its information headquarters. Shell stations around the country even distributed maps that summer promoting the fair and directing motorists toward both the exposition and Shell’s filling stations.

It's a hind sighted peek into how closely the automobile, advertising, and travel were already becoming intertwined.

A motorist could leave North Carolina, follow a road across the country, stop for gasoline, pick up a map, and continue toward an event thousands of miles away.

Joe H. Glenn Jr. and Bert L. Bennett of Quality Oil had become Winston-Salem’s first Shell affiliates the year before, and by 1930 they had received a patent for their unusual station design. Seven of these buildings were constructed in the Winston-Salem area, each costing roughly $5,000. What remains today at the corner of Sprague and Peachtree is the only one.

It, and many other novelty buildings were marketing to a new audience 96 years ago.

The automobile was still relatively young as a mass-market object. By 1929, roughly 27 million automobiles were registered in the United States, and the service station was becoming an increasingly important part of the landscape. Americans were driving farther and more often. Leaving less need for a horse and much more need for a place to refuel and check on their motor's health.

The automobile was changing the country. In turn, the country was learning how to sell things to motorists.

The Shell stations of this period are an early and particularly memorable example of that relationship. Instead of simply putting a sign beside a road, Shell made the building itself the advertisement. It was mimetic architecture, but it was also an early form of automotive wayfinding. The driver didn’t necessarily need to read a sign from a distance. The building told you what it was.

For a while, it became a lawn mower and engine repair shop. By the 1970s, it had fallen far enough out of use that its survival was no longer guaranteed. Meanwhile, we see the triumphant Group 4 win in the 1970 Le Mans by Porsche's, publicly, three week old 917K. Among others, a Shell sponsored masterpiece endurance racing across the pond showing a stark contrast in priority.

Today, that sounds ordinary but, for 1935, it was a reason for motorists to test new capabilities.

The little building on Sprague Street would continue serving motorists for another couple of decades, pumping gasoline until sometime in the 1950s. Sadly, the automotive world was changing faster than the little shell could.

Cars were becoming larger. Filling stations were becoming more sophisticated. Service bays, equipment, storage, and convenience were becoming increasingly important. A building designed primarily to make an impression from the road was becoming less practical as the business behind the sign evolved.

The shell eventually stopped selling gasoline.

Around the same time Winston-Salem would become part of the world of NASCAR and the Winston Cup era. The city became associated with one of the most recognizable names in American motorsports, while just a few miles away this little Shell continued to exist as a physical reminder of a much earlier period of motoring.

Maybe, that's where this little building becomes more interesting than its unusual shape initially suggests.

When the station was built, the roads around it belonged to an America still adjusting to the idea of mass automobile ownership.

By the time it stopped pumping gasoline, the country had interstate highways, suburbs and muscle cars. The world was seeing belt driven air conditioning, 8-track tapes, mag wheels, and more experimental aero.

The station was eventually rescued by local enthusiasts and Preservation North Carolina. A $50,000 campaign stabilized and restored the structure, while Quality Oil donated vintage Shell pumps, complete with the scallop-shaped glass light globes. In 1976, it became the first individual filling station listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today, it operates as a museum. Suitable that a building designed to advertise the future of the automobile has now become an artifact of its past.

And yet, standing beside it, it is difficult to see it as simply an old gas station.

For nearly one hundred years, automobiles have passed this building in almost every form imaginable. Early sedans gave way to streamlined postwar cars. Those gave way to family wagons, imports, trucks, sports cars, and eventually the computerized machines we drive today.

The automobile went from being a novelty to being a necessity, then an industry, then a hobby, a status symbol, a form of transportation, and for some of us, a piece of history worth preserving.

Through all of that, this little scallop has remained in place. It has never needed to move with the automobile.

It simply needed to survive long enough to watch it develop, and remind us of where it's been.

A Shell of it's Former Self

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