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Fill 'er Up: The Glory Days of Wisconsin Gas Stations
Fill 'er Up home page
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The project

Fill ’er Up: The Glory days of Wisconsin Gas Stations is a documentary that takes a look at vintage gas stations as icons of architecture, economics and pop culture. Fill ’er Up is produced as a partnership of WPT and the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Fill ’er Up travels throughout Wisconsin to profile a number of historically significant gas stations — unique buildings that changed the way we live and have become symbols of various stages of the automotive age.

“Gas stations developed innovations that become standard everywhere. They were on the forefront of changes in marketing. They were the pioneers of the commercial strip,” said Architectural Historian James Draeger.

Harvester International ID 26066.

Detail from “International trucks with Metro bodies.” Created by International Harvester Company. Whi-26066.

The first filling stations were crude shacks but backlash from the neighbors resulted in stations that looked like little houses designed to blend into the neighborhood. In Platteville one such station, built in the early 1930s, is still in operation. English cottage-style brick stations with blue tile roofs were built in Monroe and La Crosse during the mid1930s. Both structures are examples of the Pure Oil Co.’s distinct style designed by architect Carl Petersen.

Wadham’s, a Milwaukee oil company, built stations that displayed an Asian influence. Today two of the few surviving examples of these pagoda-like structures, designed by Milwaukee architect Alexander C. Eschweiler, stand in Cedarburg and West Allis.

Over the years, filling stations expanded to include service bays becoming service stations. During the hard times of the Great Depression more efficient use of space was required, and the oblong box became a popular roadside structure. In Madison, Parman’s Service Station is an illustration of the oblong box structure.

The traditional service station fell on hard times during the 1970s. Rising gas prices and self-service pumps led to lean times for station owners. This evolution, combined with environmental standards that required the replacement of underground gasoline tanks, caused some stations go out of business or convert their garages into convenience stores.

While most of the old gas stations are gone, affection for these notable examples of architecture explains why some of the buildings have been preserved. A restored 1931 Texaco station in Independence offers visitors a trip back in time.

Others have become retail stores, business offices and neighborhood gathering places. A windmill-style station, built c.1930-40 in Heafford Junction north of Tomahawk, is now an ice cream shop. A traditional house-style station in Minocqua has become a bicycle shop and people in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood enjoy gathering at Sherman Perk — a coffee shop that once was a gas station.

Fill ’er Up is based on the forthcoming book of the same name by Draeger and Historian Mark Speltz. The book is part of a new series, Places Along the Way, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society, focusing on the importance of roadside architecture in Wisconsin’s past. Future books in the series will feature opera houses, barns, railroad depots and lighthouses.

WPT is a service of the Educational Communications Board and University of Wisconsin-Extension. Wisconsin Public Television is a place to grow through learning on WHA-TV/DT, Madison; WPNE-TV/DT, Green Bay; WHRM-TV/DT, Wausau; WLEF-TV/DT, Park Falls; WHLA-TV/DT, La Crosse; and WHWC-TV/DT, Menomonie-Eau Claire.