Gas stations as marvels and "beautiful"? A look back at mid-20th century architecture

Click here for a link to an article that briefly highlights a genre of building not normally worthy of high praise in our present 21st century built environment: The gas station. The examples are thoughtful designs that made up much of the highway architecture common when US 1 was the primary means of travel through to and through south Florida. Imagine these gas stations lining Dixie Hwy. in its heyday?

Beyond gas stations, below are two pictures of Lake Worth highway architecture, not gas stations but restaurants, that graced our section Dixie Hwy. One survives today and the other does not.

Formerly at the southeast corner of Cornell Drive and N. Dixie Hwy. in Lake Worth. The property is now a vacant lot.

The former "Kristine's Restaurant", reincarnated as the Blue Front Barbecue.

Try and visualize structures like these along U.S. 1 along with a variety of mom and pop motels. That is how Lake Worth looked along its main north/south road from the 1930s through the 1960s.