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Kwik Fill Gas Station

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1955. 1499 3rd St.
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)

Oil companies early realized the importance of brand identification using consistent packaging. The former Falcon Gas stations, found in several western Pennsylvania counties, illustrate this with their yellow and green, V-shaped rooflines and gracefully curved wooden supports. Recalling Marcel Breuer's Exhibition House of 1949 in the garden of New York City's Museum of Modern Art, the V-shaped, or butterfly, roofline symbolized the speed of a falcon's flight, and was a popular design element in the 1950s. While other gas stations incorporated swooping canopies over their pumps, Falcon Gas's choice of this distinctive design as its brand's signature seems purely symbolic and aesthetic, as the wings do not cover the pumps or provide much shelter. In all of their stations, the rectangular office space is centered under the V and surrounded on three sides by plate glass, with a white concrete-block back wall.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Lu Donnelly et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Beaver Cemetery and Receiving Vault
Beaver County Courthouse
Residential District
First Presbyterian Church
Fort McIntosh Club (Riley Taylor House)

Citation

Lu Donnelly et al., "Kwik Fill Gas Station", [Beaver, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-01-BE2.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 1

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, Lu Donnelly, H. David Brumble IV, and Franklin Toker. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010, 135-135.

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