This is a REALLY cool Art Deco Gulf station. The World’s Fair Gulf Station, Rego Park . I’m very old school when it comes to things like this. Would love to find original person that took photo but could not locate. Per the Queens Chronicle: In anticipation of the tremendous amount of traffic that would be coming into Flushing for the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair, an avant garde experimental gas station was constructed befitting the futuristic pavilions.
For two years the approach to the World’s Fair—Horace Harding Boulevard—was temporarily renamed World’s Fair Boulevard. The surrounding areas—Elmhurst and Rego Park—were dominated by a total of five Shell gas stations that were fashioned in the old English Tudor and Spanish designs.
In 1939, the J.F. Meehan Construction Company boldly built for Gulf Oil Company a gas station constructed of glass blocks and chrome at the northeast corner of Queens and Horace Harding boulevards and it was subsequently nominated for best commercial construction for 1939 by the Queens Chamber of Commerce.
For many years after the closing of the fair, the structure remained the showpiece service station of Queens. However, by the mid ’80s, its property value outpaced its artistic value and so another Queens historic structure was allowed to be demolished. In 1987, it was replaced with a 17 story high rise building called the Queens Towers Condos. The development was largely vacant for the first several years. Now it dominates the intersection of the area and can be seen for miles.
#oldgasstation #gasstation #petroleum #artdeco #retro #gaspump
