Residents rally to save historic Webb City filling station - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

WEBB CITY, Mo. — It doesn’t look like much now, but what might have been a one-of-a-kind business operated by the U.S. Postal Service will get a new lease on life this spring.

Built at the corner of Liberty and Daugherty streets around 1920 and called simply The U.S. Filling Station, it served the fleet of postal cars that motored to and from the U.S. post office that had opened across the street five years earlier.

Sometime between explosives manufacturing adding to the town’s economy in the 1930s and Cardinal Scale Manufacturing opening in 1950, the Postal Service added a garage north of the filling station to service its fleet.

Erin Turner, who heads economic and community development for Webb City, believes it was in 1946.

Several years ago, the Patten family donated the property, which sits about a block north of a 1930s Broadway alignment of Route 66, with the hopes it would be preserved and restored.

“This place has a tremendous story behind it,” said Ron Hart, president of the Route 66 Chamber of Commerce, during a visit to the historic site recently. “It’s very unique.”

Recognizing that quality was Turner, whose great-grandmother rode a trolley from Quapaw, Oklahoma, in the early 1900s to waitress for miners. Turner’s paternal grandparents lived in Webb City when the station was built and during its heyday.

Last September, Turner wrote a grant application for historic preservation funds in an attempt to save it. The grant required a match by the city. When individuals and businesses got word of the project, they began donating to the cause.

One was David Perry, whose father, W.H. Perry, founded Cardinal Scale. The younger Perry has fond memories of passing the filling station on the way to work at the family business. He contributed $25,000.

“That’s what’s really exciting,” Turner said. “While we were putting the grant together, we had private citizens come forward and pledge donations. We needed $27,000, but all together they contributed $32,000.”

The Webb City Council received word earlier this month that it had been awarded a state Historic Preservation Grant, and recently agreed to accept the $39,943.

“There will be no city funds or tax dollars used on this effort,” Turner said.

Furthering the project’s finances were architect Doug Corner, of Joplin’s Corner Greer & Associates in Joplin, and Neil Tappana, of Tappana Ondrick Structural Engineers in Webb City, who agreed to do the work and oversee the project for free.

The reason behind saving it was simple, Turner said. “Webb City is very rich in its heritage. A large percentage of our citizens really care about preserving our historic downtown.”

The site is part of a historic district in Webb City that was added in July to the National Register of Historic Places after three years of effort.

“When we got that historic designation, it really made sense for the city to look at some way to take that piece of property that we own and jump-start this movement for other downtown property owners,” Turner said.

Research by both Turner and Hart indicates it was the only filling station operated by the U.S. Postal Service.

It once sold Sinclair and Tydol gas, and was built to look like a replica of the post office, complete with columns out front. Those columns have since been replaced by metal poles, but Turner hopes the preservation project will return it to its original look. The windows and door are original, as are the wooden letters on the building’s northwest side. The station has a tiny inside bathroom for patrons and an outside door that led to one used by employees. The panel inside the front door with light switch buttons is original, as are light sockets under the canopy. A transom window above the door is painted shut, but a metal lever that once opened and closed it is still intact.

“We want to keep as much of the original hardware as possible,” Turner said.

The station later served as a hair salon and a used car business. What it will become after preservation is anyone’s guess.

“We’ve thrown out a lot of ideas — pie in the sky things,” Turner said.

Among them: a small museum, a trolley stop for the recently restored and rentable city trolley, a site on a walking tour for the national historic district, an ice cream shop, an art studio and gallery.

“We are hoping that once it’s preserved, it will speak to us,” Turner said. “We’re not shutting the door on any possibilities.”

Should the city choose to put the property up for sale, she said, it would come with stipulations because the restoration will use state grant funds.

“Our goal is the exterior first. We want to make sure that on the outside, there is a visible difference that a transformation is taking place,” she said. “Then we’ll go from there.”