House with Canopy

The house with canopy sub-type was another common design for gasoline stations in the late 1920s and 1930s.  This Mercer County Filling Station, located on U.S. 68 near Harrodsburg, is a prefabricated metal structure covered with wooden weatherboards.  The addition of a canopy to the house station made for comfortable all-weather pump access.  While driving one’s automobile was considered a fair-weather activity for the wealthy in the early part of the century, the use of the canopy suggests that motoring had become a far more routine activity by the 1930s.