Groceteria.com

Of the gas station prototypes past and present, none quite screamed "googie" the way Phillips 66's sixties design did, with its space age upward-rising canopies. One blogger called it the "bat wing" design:
http://tobybelt.blogspot.com/2006/10/fo ... -wing.html However he discovered that Phillips's own name for it was the "butterfly canopy" - http://tobybelt.blogspot.com/2006/02/ph ... art-1.html

The Sacramento area has two examples. One is across the street from the venerable Pancake Circus diner, at 21st and Broadway.
http://dtcwrt.earlracing.com/stores/sac.htm


The other (as identified by Les on the Western Stores and Gas mailing list) is in North Highlands, at Watt and Larchmont. Unlike the Broadway location, this unit only has one of the bat wings.
http://dtcwrt.earlracing.com/stores/nhigh.htm


San Francisco once had one, at Army and Precita, which made a cameo in the movie Bullitt (along with our beloved Marina Safeway). Since moving to an off brand (Phillips left California in the 1970s and would not return until acquiring Union 76's retail operations), it has sadly lost its classic look.
http://www.rjsmith.com/bullitt-locations.html
http://www.rjsmith.com/Images/Bullitt/p ... u_turn.jpg

More photos of these prototypes can be found here:
http://www.agilitynut.com/gas/7.html

I wonder if the 1960's Phillips 66 gas station prototypes even were on the Oklahoma Turnpike Service Areas as well next to the Howard Johnson's restaurant.

Yes, the Oklahoma Turnpike locations had this same design. There were several locations along the turnpikes......however, they are all long gone.

There are many of these buildings still around in Oklahoma towns......Phillips was very big here in Oklahoma, their refinery and headquarters was (is) in Bartlesville, OK. (Before the Conoco-Phillips merger).

Sacramento has a former Phillips 66 on Fruitridge Rd by Channel 40. It was an auto repair shop in the 80s and 90s. Don't know what it's currently used for.

Would that be this ex-gas station, now Cal-State Auto Repair, at 4701 Fruitridge?

http://dtcwrt.earlracing.com/stores2/504/dcfc0014.jpg

It doesn't look like it was built in the butterfly-canopy architecture, though the current canopy may not be original.

After self-serve established itseklf as the norm in the 70s, a lot of service stations were retrofitted with flat canopies like this. It could have started out as just about any brand.

Union Oil also used a batwing (typically the single wing) design during the 60s. For a brief period in the late 60s, Phillips has bstations in all 50 states (something they happily promioted), so the wings probably are moldering away in just about every state in the union.

Forgot to mention a third Sacramento-area location I discovered a few months ago, at 29th and P, which is becoming a burger joint this fall.

Yes, it's the Cal-State Auto Repair. No bat wings, but an old Phillips 66 nonetheless.

There's another one without bat wings that I discovered through some library research by a friend on Flickr...out at 5th and X near Broadway, south of US 50. The wire pole sign is still up for the current tenant, Lee's Auto Repair.

Most of the Phillips 66 stations in California were originally Flying A stations, Phillips bought the West Coast operations of Tidewater-Associated Oil (Flying A) in 1966. Many of the Flying A's included angular design that was similar to Phillips.

jamcool wrote:Most of the Phillips 66 stations in California were originally Flying A stations, Phillips bought the West Coast operations of Tidewater-Associated Oil (Flying A) in 1966. Many of the Flying A's included angular design that was similar to Phillips.

That might explain why that ex-P66 at 5th and X looks more like a Flying A design (upward canopy but no butterfly) but just with Phillips' wirepole sign added on later.