Octagon-Shaped Gas Station. Thanks to M. Weber, Pontiac, IL

Station has been refurbished with weeks of hard work & a fresh coat of paint. It looks just like it did in the 1920’s & 1930’s when it sat where Howard Street met Chicago St., “Pontiac’s Main Street”. Few have seen the tiny steel building since it was removed by a team of horses & skids during the Winter snow storm in 1937. Pontiac Rustic Auto Club decided to restore the station as a permanent fixture at Threshermen’s Park. It is receiving much attention. This move is a big change for the Old Station. For 57 years, it made its home South of town at the Brock Farm. For several years, Ada Brock & her late husband used the weathered building as a brooder house for chickens. Mrs. Brock said some people considered it a landmark on Old Route 66. When they saw it they knew they were close to the County Nursing Home. In April 1994 the Auto Club crane-hoisted the station off it’s foundation by the tin roof, loaded it onto a flat-bed trailer & transported it to the Threshermen’s Park & anchored the side walls to concrete. You’d think it would fall into a million pieces, but it didn’t. As the station was brought back to life with “Conoco Green” colors and the shiny silver roof, memories came alive in the minds of those who grew up in the neighborhood where the station was once the gathering spot for light conversation, practical jokes, paperboys, and snowball fights. Allen Johnson, now in his 80’s, of Rural Pontiac was the last to run the station. Johnson recalls a long list of honest, hard working customers who charged a week’s worth of gas when fuel was 13 cents a gallon & the old pumps had a $10.00 capacity. Every body had charge accounts back then. It was a busy place come pay day he said. When most folks think of the Old Station; the friendly, smiling face of the late Arleigh Jones comes to mind. Jones ran the station prior to Johnson and then took over Conoco’s bulk wagon business. The station was built by Robert Kay and was one of the earliest pre-fab gas stations in the mid to late 1920’s, according to John Darqan of Pontiac.