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To My Friendly Neighborhood Gas Station

Forget the summery weather. According to the calendar it’s January 1940 and if you need your car serviced you can dial 3893.

The calendar hangs on the wall in College Heights Exxon, known in 1940 as the College Heights Service Station. Owner Gary Green stumbled on the relic in a thrift store. Of course, he had to have it and frame it.

If you’ve driven on North Atherton Street, you’ve noticed College Heights Exxon. It’s been on the corner of Hillcrest and Atherton since 1929. That makes it one of the oldest working gas stations in America.

It’s also one of the prettiest. With its peaked roofs, stucco walls, red trim and red-and-white awnings, the station looks more like a spiffy little house than a commercial building. 

It was part of a trend. In the 1920s, according to the National Park Service, as car ownership and filling stations proliferated, folks complained “about the intrusion of gas stations into residential areas.” The industry responded, with buildings designed to blend into their neighborhoods.

Thus, on websites devoted to funky old filling stations, College Heights Exxon takes its place alongside such roadside curiosities as gas stops that look like dinosaurs, tea kettles, pagodas, space ports, redwood trees and cowboy boots and hats. Passersby routinely take pictures of it, Green tells me.

(If you’re into retro gas stations, you can visit Dunkle’s Gulf, an art deco station off the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Bedford, and Reighard’s in Altoona, which, at age 113, claims to be the oldest working station in America. Both very cool, but does either have a gorgeous flower arrangement in a big pot out front? How about a checkerboard sidewalk? College Heights Exxon does.)

College Heights Exxon owner Gary Green. Photo by Russell Frank

Inside, the office is a mini museum, displaying old photos of the station, old maps, model cars and trucks, a bell that used to be in the College Heights School across the street (and the nearby Krumrine farm before that), and old cans of motor oil and Flit bug spray. (Fun fact: Dr. Seuss got his start designing ads for Flit.) 

First, it was a Shell station. Then it was a Humble. Then an Esso. The only significant change to the site is that the pumps have been moved from the front of the building to behind it. 

Another thing that hasn’t changed: the service. They pump your gas and squeegee your windshield at College Heights Exxon, just like in the days when pump jockeys wore bowties. If you’re worried about your tire pressure or your engine fluids, they’ll check those, too. And if you need more service than that, the four-digit number on the calendar doesn’t work anymore, but you can punch 10 numbers and make an appointment. 

In other words, it’s not just a filling station; it’s a service station.

Mechanic Jeff Houtz. Photo by Russell Frank

I hung around for an hour last week and noticed that every customer knew the names of the three guys working at the station. And Green and mechanics Jim Hartswick and Jeff Houtz knew their customers’ names as well. One old-timer told me he’s been filling up at the station since the 1950s. 

College Heights Exxon is a throwback in another way. Green, Hartswick and Houtz are from old Centre County families. Hartswick’s great grandfather owned a farm in what is now East College Heights. (That’s why there’s a Hartswick Street just a couple of blocks away.) Green’s family goes back to the Civil War locally. Houtzes have been around almost as long.

The longevity and stability of the crew is impressive as well. Green started working at the station in 1987 and bought the place from Uni-Mart (which had bought it from the Krumrine family) in 1995. Hartswick has been there since 1992, Houtz since 2000. 

To stay at a job so long, Hartswick said, “you’ve got to like who you work with.” 

The retro vibe is sweet, but can College Heights Exxon make it to its centennial birthday? An older customer base is a shrinking customer base. Younger customers can’t get their cars inspected at the Sheetz or the Uni-Mart, but they can get a soda or a snack or a lottery ticket or a pair of sunglasses. Green doesn’t carry any of that stuff.

Mechanic Jim Hartswick. Photo by Russell Frank

The endless roadwork on Atherton Street a couple of years ago was bad for business. So was COVID. So are record-setting gas prices. Green foresees the day when a new owner converts the station into a café, like the Pump Station in Boalsburg.

I’m driving to California as you read this. (Note to burglars: We have a house sitter.) With the price of gas topping $5 per gallon and the need to wean ourselves away from fossil fuels becoming ever more urgent, I’m not feeling a lot of love toward gas stations. But I’ll miss College Heights Exxon if it goes before I do. I like taking my car to my neighborhood service station.