From Gettysburg to Virginia and Back
This may have been built with a gas station originally, but for several years it was a standalone convenience store. Judging by the windows and roof, I'd say it was built as an 80's-era 7-Eleven. In 2008, they installed Shell pumps in the parking lot, which converted to Conoco after this picture was taken.
I originally thought this place was historic, but now I'm thinking it's from no earlier than the 50's. Their website says "Family owned and operated since 1991," but the building looks a little older than that so I'm guessing that's when the current owners bought it. It is by far the largest exterior-access hotel I've seen, so even if it's not historic it's still got something interesting.
Oh, and apparently it's also got a 3-star rating!
When this was first built in 1860, it served as a saloon and bowling alley (which I didn't know even existed back then) in addition to being the owner's home. The battle a couple years later saw the building taken over by the Confederates, who used it as a field hospital. I haven't found too much on what happened between then and now, but it would seem it went back to being a private residence until the 90's. Currently it operates as a museum.
This building began life as the town jail. It doesn't look incredibly old, I'd assume it was built in the 1920's. It evidently didn't last very long as a jail, as it has been home to the county library since 1949.
This building was first constructed in 1858. Like most of the town's older buildings, it served as a hospital during the war. What made this interesting was that both armies used this place. I'm not quite sure how they worked that out; considering they were trying to kill each other in the field, I don't imagine they'd want the other side to be saving lives in the same building as them.
Honestly I'm a little stumped on this one. On my camera roll it was between two pictures of the same building (the one seen below), so I know it has to be right around there. I looked around for it on Streetview and couldn't find this corner anywhere around it. As you'd expect, Googling "Civil War Building Gettysburg" brings up results for basically every other building in town, so having the name wasn't helpful. What I can tell you is that it was built in 1835.
This was built in 1825 as a dry goods store. It became House of Bender, a gift shop, sometime prior to the 60's, which lasted up until around 2014, when it became a clock shop that apparently didn't want to shell out the money for an entirely new sign.
This is the town's center square, home to most of their restaurants and gift shops. I was going to make the observation that this is a rather touristy area, but basically the entire town's like that. I get the impression there are more hotel rooms than houses here.
Yes, I double-checked and it is in fact Gettys, not Getty's. I also checked to see if this was the guy the town was named after. It was. From this, I can conclude I've been pronouncing this town's name wrong my entire life.
As for the hotel itself, it originally opened in the 1920's and was renovated in 1996. It's one of the higher-end ones in town.
It's not that often you see an open 7-Eleven that still has the cupola up top! I'm wondering if Gettysburg's stricter building codes required them to keep it up there, since the 70's colonial look fits in with the town rather nicely.
Nothing much to say about these houses, I just liked how the picture turned out. The newer looking building next to them is the Adams County Arts Council, which despite the name doesn't seem like it's linked to the government at all.
This church doesn't have a website of their own, making research a little more difficult, but I was able to track down their Facebook page, which refers to it as historic and has 1840 in their handle. From that I think it's reasonable to deduce that was the year it was built. I'm wondering if it changed hands or merged with another church sometime along the way, since the stained glass leaves out the St. Paul's part of the name, which I thought would have been the most important part to include.
I think Budget Host, similar to Econolodge and Red Carpet Inn, goes around buying up former independent motels. I'd rank them in between the other two in terms of quality- unlike Econolodge, they don't really invest much in keeping the motels modernized, but they at least keep them decently well maintained, unlike Red Carpet. The washed-out lower part of the sign says Three Crowns Motor Lodge, which I'm assuming was the motel's original name prior to Budget Host taking over.
This was the place we stayed that night. It still looked very 50's inside the rooms, but in a good way.
This was built as an Exxon station in the 80's, but apparently lost the franchise in the early 2000's. Since then, it has been operating independently as American Fuel.
This building is mostly occupied by a giant model of the battlefield, which is pretty neat. The big frame over the entrance was the first thing that caught my attention, though. I'm guessing at one point they had a much more impressive sign mounted up here.
In 1925, the Gettysburg Hotel (seen to the right) decided to expand onto the adjacent property. Instead of a normal streetfront store, they put in a full theater on the ground floor. At some point the theater was taken over by Gettysburg College, although it remains open to the public and still runs new movies.
This diner first opened in 1955 as the Varsity Diner, which didn't last long. In the early 60's, it became the Cannonball Cafeteria, and in 1971 was turned into the Lincoln Diner. This is where I got breakfast the morning I was in town, it was pretty good. It looks really neat from the outside, unfortunately my picture does not do it justice.
At the time, I thought it was really unusual to see a Sunoco paired with Sleven, but now that they've assumed control of A-Plus I think this will be a common sight before too long. The 2008 Streetview shows this being a generic Sunoco Food Mart, which has me really curious how this place came to be. I know for a fact 7-Eleven doesn't do franchises, and they seem too large to worry about buying individual independent locations, so there go my top two explanations. :P
The Gas-Liquor-Motel sign had been out of date for several years at this point, it would seem the gas pumps were taken out well over a decade ago. The sign has since been replaced with one that doesn't advertise gas. Surprisingly it doesn't have the store's actual name, Beckley's Country Store. The motel is separated by a couple houses from this store, but still seems to be operated as the same business. This must have been in the middle of nowhere when it opened, but recently the area's developed quite a bit. A massive subdivision is currently under construction behind it.
I was a little surprised to see this here. I had no idea they existed this far south or east. Looking at the other stores in town, it seems they've actually got a decent presence here. They've got two stores in Frederick versus a Wegmans, Giant, and 3 Weis' (which I was also surprised to see down here). I think this store originally dates back to the 80's or early 90's, and was given a new façade sometime in the 2000's.
This would have most likely been something else originally, but it became Gulf around 2010. They invested enough in the station to put up a new canopy, but not enough to get it a full set of decals.
This looks like it would have been a 1930's Texaco station originally. It's had some strange modifications done to it since then, such as adding a second story over the station part. What's even weirder is that it now appears to be somebody's home now. The car, the mailbox, and all the lawn chairs under the canopy all seem rather residential. Generally I try to avoid posting people's lived-in houses, but since this one has a retail past I think I can make an exception.
Down the road from that last store is another former Texaco. This one sold gas independently for a few years before adopting the Valero name around 2010. Incidentally, Texaco and Valero were operated by the same company. In 2017, Valero was bought out by the parent company of Circle K and is not opening new ones anymore. Some are being rebranded, but I imagine the brand name is going to die out very slowly.
It took me a long time to track this one down for a couple reasons- first and foremost, it recently closed. Also, despite advertising Liberty, the store's actual name was Haymarket Auto Center. I was sorta sad to see this had closed, as we stopped here to get gas and freshen up on our trip. It was a pretty pleasant store as I remember. It was previously called Evergreen Market, and sold gas independently before undergoing the conversion in 2015.
One thing I noticed while I was hunting this down was that even though this road felt like we were driving though the middle of nowhere, it's actually really close to Dulles, one of Virginia's larger cities, and only a few miles further to DC.
This looks like it was originally a 1940's Gulf station. Prior to Sunoco, this was a BP which I think existed prior to the Amoco merger. The old service station is now being used as a market. I really enjoy seeing a station as old as this still selling gas and in such good condition.
We stopped along the Potomac on the VA/MD border on the way home. I decided to try my hand at taking an artsy photo, and am pleased with how it came out. 99% of the time with me, getting creative with photos just means holding my camera down to ground (or, in this case, water) level and take a picture looking slightly upwards.
We finally reached Gettysburg, again, at night and stopped at the TGI Fridays at the outlet mall for dinner. It was getting late and I still had a ways to go so I didn't get to explore the center too much, but it seems like a relatively healthy outlet mall. It looks like it opened in the 90's, and was supposed to have a second phase that never happened. It's architecture's a similar style to the closed Reading Station Outlets, making me think they may have been developed by the same people. The one picture I did get was of this string light portrait of Lincoln facing the highway, which I really liked.
Given the area we explored today, I feel this is the only appropriate song to include. Never mind the fact that The Band is Canadian. Or that their name actually is "The Band," which makes it difficult to talk about them without confusing the other person.
That's interesting about Valero - I'm pretty sure I've seen several local locations receive new logos and canopies this year.
ReplyDeleteAlso, cool shot of the river!
I could be wrong about Valero then, Wikipedia was my reference.
DeleteThank you!
Well the thing is I've heard the same thing, so I don't know who to believe!
DeleteYou're welcome!