Wright’s Gas Station Will Finally Be Built
Back in 1927 Frank Lloyd Wright did some preliminary plans for a filling station to be located in Buffalo, NY at the corner of Michigan Ave. and Cherry Street. For reasons I haven’t been able to uncover the project never went forward. Wright designed it for a Buffalo oil company named Tydol. You can see a rendering of what it might have looked like here.
Or, you can go see it in the near future. Now, 81 years later it’s going to be built. Buffalo has been steadily building up its existing Wright holdings and adding more that had been designed but never built. The idea is to continue emerging as a hotbed of architectural history using Wright projects, and to attract more architectural tourism. Besides the gas station, a boathouse designed by Wright for the University of Wisconsin is complete; a mausoleum he designed for Darwin D. Martin is complete; and two houses he designed and built for Martin are in different stages 
of restoration.
The filling station will be built completely enclosed in a steel and glass structure at Carroll Street, Michigan Avenue and Seneca Street. That spot is to be renamed Frank Lloyd Wright Place. Right nearby, and a contributor to and benefactor of the project, is the Buffalo Transportation Pierce Arrow Museum. It houses some very interesting autos like the Pierce-Arrow and Thomas Flyer.
According to a NY Times article from 2004, the gas station was supposed to be the prototype for 2,500 stations the Tydol company would build nationwide. One of the unique accommodations was a ladies’ room so women wouldn’t have to use the mechanics’ bathroom. The waiting room was on the second floor and featured Wright’s iconic built-in seating.
The changing times did cause the redesign of Wright’s original stairway since it didn’t include enough headroom to meet today’s standards, and an elevator was added to accommodate people in wheelchairs.
Timeless…absolutely timeless.
