Come for gas, stay for history: Wilmington service stations date back more than 100 years
Note: Story originally posted by StarNews Online. Written by John Staton, Wilmington StarNews
We don’t tend to think of gas stations as being historic, probably because they’re constantly being modernized.
But if you think about it, the first gas stations started popping up in Wilmington and elsewhere more than 100 years ago, so there is some history there.
According to Beverly Tetterton’s 2005 book “Wilmington: Lost But Not Forgotten,” one of the first gas stations in Wilmington was MacMillan & Cameron Co. at Third and Chestnut streets, where the United Bank building is now.
Operated by business partners Henry Jay MacMillan and Bruce Cameron, it first opened in 1921 and later expanded into a chain. In 1939, MacMillan & Cameron built a large, distinctive Art Moderne-style station at Third and Chestnut. Unlike most gas stations today it was full service, and even sold tires and did repairs and paint jobs.
Undated photo of John Winder Hughes (left) and his brother, James Bettner “Jimmy” Hughes, the original owners of Hughes Bros. in Wilmington. Now with two locations, it started with a gas station and repair shop at at Second and Market Streets in 1921. Photo courtesy of Nelson Hughes.
Hughes Bros. tire and repair shop, which has been in its distinctive building at 11th and Market streets since 1935, actually started a gas station and repair shop at Second and Market streets in 1921.
One could make a very long list of places where gas stations used to be in Wilmington, like the Gulf station that was at Third and Chestnut, where the New Hanover Library’s Story Park is now, all the way through the 1980s. Wrightsville Beach used to have at least two gas stations on Harbor Island, but not anymore.
Interestingly, Tetterton notes, “The service station phenomenon was responsible for the demolition of numerous properties.”
Even the stately Burgwin-Wright House at Third and Market streets, which dates to the 1700s, was almost torn down to build a gas station in the 1930s before it was acquired and preserved by the The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of North Carolina, which still runs it.
Tetterton also notes that many early gas stations “featured unique building designs” as a way of attracting business. A few of those old gas stations are still around and being used for other things, like the tattoo shop in the former Pure Oil station on the corner of 17th Street and Wrightsville Avenue that resembles a quaint little English cottage.