Vintage Postcards: Postcard Blog » petroliana

Pure Oil Company Gas Station Postcards

VintagePostcards — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:06:07 +0000

As we weather the remnants of the Great Ice Storm of 2009 here in Kentucky and await the return of Alexander Graham Bell’s fabulous invention — the telephone — our mind began to wander to more pleasant thoughts: in our case, roadside Americana that we saw when young(er). Every summer, Dad took us on road trips to historical sites. We think we’ve seen every Civil War battlefield and every museum on the East Coast from Mystic Harbor, Connecticut on down to about the Florida state line.

Bored by battlefields, we began collecting roadside America postcards. An especially nice example which we recently acquired is this c. 1930s triple-view post card of the Pure Oil gas station and roadside motel on Route 11, five miles south of Harrisonburg, Virginia. This old postcard offers an interesting glimpse into motel rooms of the time. Spartan by today’s standards, they offered neither a radio nor a telephone. (Television wouldn’t make its motel room debut until the early 1950s.)

Pure Oil, founded in 1914 in Columbus, Ohio, began building its signature blue-roofed gas stations, based loosely upon English cottage architecture, in about 1926; more “contemporary” designs emerged in the late 1940s. Published by Marken & Bielfeld of Frederick, Maryland, this is a classic roadside America, Rockingham County or petroliana collectible in excellent condition.

See some frightful meteorology postcards and be grateful for the weather you’ve got, or visit our selection of Route 40 postcards at our website to see some more old roadside America postcards. Or, visit the world’s largest postcard bookstore.

A Classic Lincoln Highway Postcard

VintagePostcards — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:10:10 +0000

When I was a child of about six, my father began traveling Route 40 and Route 30 on summer trips to see my grandparents. I was attracted to roadside postcards documenting where we stayed and what we saw, and this fondness for roadside Americana has continued throughout my life, as I obtained a master’s degree in historic preservation and became an architectural historian.

Here’s a classic example of a 1950s roadside Americana postcard. Its highly detailed graphics depict Crosser’s Amoco service station and roadside diner on the Lincoln Highway (Route 30) in Lisbon, Ohio. The gas station, in the Spanish Revival architectural style, actually dates to the 1920s or 1930s, when this style was popular. A bonus with this gas station collectible from Columbiana County is the roadside diner next to the gas station.

Read another post about roadside America postcards, or see more roadside postcards at our website. You can learn more about the Lincoln Highway in the roadside section of our popular reference page.

An Outsider Art Black Americana Postcard

VintagePostcards — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:06:25 +0000

For collectors of black Americana vintage postcards, it doesn’t get much better than this! Collectibles which depict every-day life in the black community are scarce, and this old black history postcard shows the proud owner of a 1952 Pontiac, which he has decorated in a folk art, or outsider art, manner. This great image was made in 1973 at a Gulf gas station in Houston, TX and is in near-mint condition. It has cross-appeal to the roadside America, or roadside Americana, collector and is also an interesting petroliana collectible.

Read another post about roadside America collectibles, or browse the selection of black Americana or gas station postcards at our website.

A Moreland Motor Truck and Zerolene Postcard

VintagePostcards — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 21:53:35 +0000

Here’s a handsome and seldom-seen image which recently sold. It’s an unused c. 1915-1925 postcard of a Moreland Motor Truck Co. vehicle at East Lake Park in Los Angeles, California. Nicely detailed and with deep, rich colors, this vintage postcard shows a distillate 4-wheel truck marked as number 1609, with prominent advertising on the side for Zerolene, “the Standard Oil for motor cars.” (Zerolene was a product of the Standard Oil Co., now part of Chevron.) The reverse says that the truck operated “on No. 1 Engine Distillate at a saving in fuel cost, over gasoline, of more than 50 percent. Six different sizes from 1500 to 13000 pounds capacity.”

Developed in 1907 at Standard Oil’s Richmond, CA refinery, the lubricant Zerolene got its name because, according to the company, “the product flows freely at zero.”

The Moreland Co.’s founder, Matt Moreland, was one of the founding fathers of the modern long-haul trucking industry. Moreland trucks were only made in small numbers and sold primarily in 11 Western states. Mr. Moreland founded the company in Burbank in 1911, after working as an engineer for Winton and Durocar. While early Morelands used Continental and Hercules gas engines, later models had Waukesha gas engines and Cummins and Hercules diesels. Always an innovator, his early trucks were equipped with gasifiers, which allowed them to burn low-cost distillate fuel (similar to kerosene) such as Zerolene.

Published by Geo. Rice and Son of Los Angeles, this is a desirable petroliana, advertising or transportation collectible! See other examples of automobile postcards at our website.

Road trip! Road trip! Read about our visit to a West Virginia postcard dealer’s shop.