Signs of the Times

 

QUESTION: I love old cars and have visited several antique automobile museums. Several of them, including the Antique Automobile Club of America Museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania, also have gas station signs on display. I’m also a big fan of the cable TV show American Pickers. One of the guys on that show had a real passion of old filling station signs. It didn’t take me long to purchase my first gas station sign. Now I have about a dozen. I buy and collect what I like, but I don’t know too much about why there were so many different signs used in early filling stations. Can you help me expand my knowledge?

ANSWER: Petroliana, the collecting of automobile and gas station memorabilia, is one of the hottest categories of collecting today. The signs used by these stations are just one of the many different items collectors love. While many were discarded after no longer being needed, many ended up stashed in old barns and garages. Signs from major oil companies 

, or antiques related to gas stations and the oil business, is a collecting area focused on advertising, with key subcategories being gas pumps, gas-pump globes, oil cans, road maps, signs, and major names like Mobil, Texaco, Standard Oil, Phillips 66, Shell, Sinclair, and Esso.

The first filling station was a city pharmacy in Wiesloch, Germany, where Bertha Benz, a German automotive pioneer, refilled the tank of her automobile in 1888. Other German pharmacies quickly entered the filling station business.

A filling station constructed at 420 South Theresa Avenue, Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1905 was the first filling station built to sell fuel and oil. Standard Oil of California built the second in Seattle, Washington, in 1907.

By 1910, over 500,000 automobiles roads highways and byways of the United States.  With that volume of cars on the roads, filling tanks from fuel barrels wasn’t efficient. Gulf Refining Company opened the first drive-in filling station in Pittsburgh on December 1, 1913.

Many early filling stations doubled as service stations and sold automobile-related products, as well as candy and soft drinks, and offered toilet services. 

In the early days of automobile travel, service stations were unfamiliar and often poorly lit at night. So lighted gas-pump globes and other oil company signage were key to reassuring and drawing in motorists. And since pumping gas was a new experience, early pumps allowed motorists to see if the gasoline was clean through a small glass window, and later to watch the price as they pumped the gas.

While some cities today have a gas station on every corner, complete with huge signs illuminating a variety of multinational oil giants’ slickly produced logos, the industry was a whole lot different when cars first appeared on the roads in the early 20th century. Gas stations were extremely rare, generally doing business only in larger cities and on the busiest highways.

In the 1910s, the market began growing, as did the competition, especially among lubricating oil companies. The first signs advertising lubricating oil, produced in a variety of materials, including baked enamel, sheet steel, and tin, appeared in grocery stores: Sign makers used lithography to print signs on tin and silk screen to print signs on sheet-steel.

These signs allowed a store to tell its customers which automotive products and brands it sold, which, in turn, lured customers inside. The signs were often clever and engaging. One particularly rare sign by Oilzum Motor Oils and Lubricants, for example, featured an attractive graphic of a man in a hat, along with this tongue-in-cheek slogan: “If Motors Could Speak we wouldn’t need to Advertise.”

In the 1920s, gas stations became more common, as did gas pumps, which brought about a new type of sign—the pump plate. Attached to gas pumps, they advertised the pump’s brand of gasoline. The plates came in a variety of shapes—round and otherwise—and a wide range of sizes, from as small as five inches across to more than a foot wide.

The Burdick Sign Company of Chicago produced the majority of these of porcelain, which made them both attractive visually and more durable in almost any kinds of weather. Porcelain signs remained common through the 1950s, despite a decrease in production during World War II.

People collect signs bearing a variety of company names, though the most coveted are often the smaller, regional brands—Signal, Gilmore, and Wilshire, with its distinctive Polly brand gas and parrot logo. Of course, signs from bigger brands such as Shell, Standard Oil----as well as its descendants, Mobil, Exxon, and Esso—and Philips 66 have large followings, as do signs from oil-and-gas brands like Sinclair, Pennzoil, Valvoline, Zerolene, Sky Chief, Tydol, Derby, Derby, Conoco, Union 76, and Frontier.

Aside from plate pumps, some people collect “lubesters,” the signs attached to oil and grease dispensers. Warning signs are also popular with collectors. “No Smoking Stop Motor” signs, for example, are one popular niche within this category. Finally, some of the rarest gas-and-service signs are those used at marine and aviation stations.

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Romancing the Road

QUESTION: My mother saved every map she and my dad collected on their many road trips. Some of these go back as far as just after World War II.  Do these have any value today?

ANSWER: Road maps, especially the ones produced by oil companies for their service stations, are highly collectible. While older ones can be worth higher amounts, depending on their condition, newer ones aren’t as pricey. They’re also easy to store, so a collection won’t take up a lot of room—always a good thing for those living in apartments.

The systematic mapping of roads and the installation of route signs by the government didn’t occur until the auto arrived. Prior to the mid-1890s, bicyclists were the ones who demanded road maps. But as the new century dawned, the number of automobiles on the roads began to increase. The Chicago Times-Herald printed the first automobile road map in the country for a race they sponsored from Chicago to Waukegan.

In 1918, Wisconsin’s state legislature initiated a numbered highway system., which the federal government adopted in 1926. The new highway system gave us the names for legendary roads like Route 66 or California’s scenic Highway 1. Rand McNally became the first major publisher to adopt the system, which it also helped promote by installing numbered signs along these national roadways.

Before World War II, service stations gave out road maps free. These featured elaborate artwork. Oil producers such as Esso, Chevron, Shell, Gulf, Standard, Texaco, and Socony-Vacuum (later known as Mobil) all distributed maps.

Raod maps belong to the growing category of collectibles called “petroliana,” or anything to do with gas stations and the petroleum industry. For the most part, they’re reasonably priced, and some estimate that during their peak service stations distributed over 8 billion. Oil companies provided them as a service. They were made to be disposable, marked up by the gas station attendant as he gave directions and sent his customer on their way. But people often saved maps as souvenirs of the trips they made.

As automobiles proliferated, the marking of routes changed. Before numbered roads, stripes of paint on telephone poles, fence posts or trees delineated the various routes. In 1925, states began numbering their roads. At first it was an adventure to drive, but by the 1930s it had turned into a method of tourism. Tourist cabins sprang up along the way, as motorists made their way across country. Historians consider this time the road map’s golden age.

The Sinclair Oil Company hired noted artists like Peter Helck, who also produced advertising illustrations for car companies. Maps featured images of a carefree and playful life on the road, with service stations welcoming children and dogs, many of which were Scottish terriers, like the ones popular in movies like “The Thin Man.”

Maps produced during World War II reminded motorists to slow down to save tires. After the War, maps featured dynamic scenes, vibrant colors, and great graphics.

By the baby booming 1950s, the images tended to show nuclear families—a mom, dad, son and daughter, all enjoying life on the road. During the 1960s, maps displayed the dotted lines of planned Interstates and aerial views of highway cloverleafs.

Three companies—Rand McNally, H. M. Gousha, and General Drafting—produced most of the service station maps. These became a vehicle through which oil companies could promote the service at their stations, for it was service that differentiated them.

General Drafting produced maps for Esso, whose attendants handed out some 34.5 million maps in 1965.
After 1965, the quality of service station maps declined until their virtual disappearance in the 1980s.

Today, of course, free maps are long gone. They faded away, along with so many other aspects of the highway culture, with the 1973 energy crisis.

Early road maps from the first decade of the 1900s can be worth $75-100 today in good condition. Those from the 1920s and 1930s range in price from $20-40.  Groups of maps from the 1950s sell for $10-20.