Pump and Circumstance: Glory Days of the Gas Station

Margolies organizes his material within five chapters: Pump and Circumstance (signage); Pioneer Days (road maps); Golden Age: 1920-1940 (Pop Architecture, Aircraft, Razzmatazz: Kid Stuff, Believe it or Not!, Razzmatazz: That's Entertainment!, and Deco Moderne); "Going, Going...: 1940-1965 (Razzmatazz: Postwar Frolics, Porcelain Enamel, restrooms, and Razzmatazz: The Best of the Best; and Back to the Future: 1965-1990. The book is filled with superb illustrations (the best of which being archival photographs) and the text is based on a wealth of primary sources. Chapter 3 was especially interesting to me because it examines (with some of the best graphics in the book) various gas station architectures which include the Gulf Lighthouse Service Station (Miami Beach, FL), windmill-shaped buildings (Saint Cloud, MN), shell-shaped Shell gas stations (Winston-Salem, NC), the B-17 "Bomber Gas Station" (the plane installed above the pumps in Milwaukee, WI), "Bob's Airmail Service Station" built around a 32-passenger Fokker plane (Los Angeles, CA), and a zepplin-shaped building grounded beside the Pennzoil pumps (near Pittsburgh, PA). Photographs of most of these facilities are included, accompanied by brief but informative commentaries.

I highly recommend this book (as well as Ticket to Paradise) to those who share my interest in icons such as the gas station. Its evolution has been inextricably involved in the cultural history of the United States.


PUMPS, PETROL, PROMOS AND PIZAZZ   November 29, 2000
 12 out of 13 found this review helpful

Margolies has done his homework. In addition to a good written history of the "filling station," he has come up with photos and postcards depicting all aspects of delivering gasoline to your hungry tank. Following are just a few:

A station shaped like a red and white teapot, complete with pouring spout, in Zillah, Washington, built in 1922.

A 50 foot high tepee shaped gas station from Lawrence, Kansas, built in 1930

A station with a roof shaped like a red cowboy hat with a 50 foot wide brim, and restrooms in a structure shaped like a pair of cowboy boots, in Seattle, Washington, built just after World War II.

A station utilizing an actual B-17 Bomber overhanging the gas pumps from Milwaukie (sic), Oregon, again built just after World War II.

A flying saucer service station from Ashtabula, Ohio, built in 1966.

There are lighthouses, windmills, giant soda bottles, icebergs, and a myriad of other shapes and styles including art-deco, ceramic tile, cape cod, and just plain wooden sheds and concrete blocks.

The book includes a written history of filling stations from tanks atop horse-drawn carts to today's stations. Every kind of pump from hand cranked to coin operated to visible level to today's 24 hour automated pump are displayed and discussed. There are men's and women's uniforms, and there are advertising slogans, signs, very artistic give-away road maps, and even a discussion of the evolution of "the clean restroom" as an advertising feature.

We live in the era of the automobile, and PUMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE is, in addition to being brainfood for the nostalgia buff in all of us, a history of that still unfolding era.

This is the kind of coffee table book that any over 30 guest in your home will be drawn to and, pointing at some illustration, say, "Hey, I remember those."


A nostalgic look in the rear-view mirror   April 23, 2000
 6 out of 9 found this review helpful

This handsome book arouses my nostalgia for the good old days of motoring both visually and educationally. Besides tracing the evolution of gas-station architecture, gas pumps themselves, and petrol merchandising, the book displays top-quality photo reproduction. This is especially to be appreciated for the way it shows the details in the older pictures, which were made in the days of slow, fine-grain films. And the book's generous page size helps the photos stand out, too. There's a good bibliography to further stoke the nostalgia.