In Case You've Never Seen the Frank Lloyd Wright Gas Station

It has been almost 34 years since I moved to Minnesota, and until a week or so ago, I hadn't seen the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed filling station in Cloquet, Minnesota. 

This is the only gas station Wright ever designed. It was built in 1958, a year before he died, though he had originally done the design in the 1920s as part of a utopian community, meant for somewhere in New York State, called Broadacre City.

I think I wouldn't have liked Wright's idea of utopia: cars were very much at the center of it.

The good parts of the station: the three service bays are lit by skylights. The cantilevered green metal roof (a Wrightian signature element). The overall horizontal arrangement, echoing his Prairie School roots.

The not so good: Wright's original plan called for the gas pumps to hang from the roof, not touching the ground. It was the 1920s when he had this idea, so maybe I should cut him some slack, but that is just a really stupid idea. By the time the station was built, health and safety regulations were in place to protect the public from that disaster waiting to happen.

The also not so good: While the second-floor glass observation room is an interesting idea, it hasn't held up so well physically, as you can see. And Wright's concept for it was that it would be a community center and gathering place... at the gas station. Which seems pretty strange, looking back from the future.

As far as the specifics of the present-day Lindholm Service Station go, aside from an understandable, workaday lack of upkeep, it's a bit annoying that someone involved has misused the Eaglefeather font on their signage. It's based on the lettering Wright created for his drawings of a 1922 house in Eagle Rock, California, but architects, including Wright, generally only use capital letters, so the gas station signs — which are in upper and lower case — look wrong and lack impact.

The station was added to the National Register of Historic Places in the mid-1980s. It's still a working station so if you drive a gas-powered vehicle, you can get gas there. Or buy a Coke out front from the anachronistic vending machine.

___

Get this quote about Broadacre City from its Wikipedia page, linked above: "In a sense it was the exact opposite of transit-oriented development. There is a train station and a few office and apartment buildings..., but the apartment dwellers are expected to be a small minority. All important transport is done by automobile and the pedestrian can exist safely only within the confines of the[ir] one acre...plots where most of the population dwells."