Museum pumped to save station

By Frank Zoretich

Tribune Reporter

Wednesday, June 4, 2003

The little old gas station, long vacant on the northeast corner of Mountain Road and 12th Street Northwest, was scheduled to be demolished by the end of June.

Instead, it will be taken from the site June 16 by the Wheels Museum and stashed in a storage yard. Wheels has no building yet in which to display its growing collection of transportation-related artifacts, so it's storing items like the gas station here and there around town.   >> photos

Joe Craig, vice president of the Wheels board, said the 1930s-style metal-walled gas station, believed to be the only one of its kind remaining in Albuquerque, eventually will be restored to prime condition and given a place of pride in a future Wheels exhibit.

"The choice was take it now, or it will be destroyed," Craig said. "We decided we had to save its life."

To look at it now, set at an angle facing the intersection, the former Gardner Oil Co. station is an eyesore that hardly seems worth saving.

The two gas pumps and the canopy that once sheltered them were removed long ago.

The front door is welded shut. But it's easy to enter by stepping through the gaping space where a window used to be, or by walking through the single-bay cement-block garage attached to the other side of the original 13-square-feet building.

The cement-block portion will be demolished, rather than moved with the metal structure.

Dan Puccetti, who is giving the gas station to Wheels, recently had the building's interior stripped of asbestos and layers of lead-based paint on its inside and outside walls. Both substances are health hazards.

A recent visit revealed no litter inside, except for two empty liquor pint bottles.

Gazing at it from outside, Puccetti said, with some degree of astonishment, "This is the architectural gem that is going to be saved for posterity."

Puccetti said the station's underground gasoline storage tanks were removed in 1989. An environmental survey showed no gasoline contamination at the site.

Puccetti and a sister are acting as executors for the estate of their hospitalized mother, Jane Puccetti, who bought the property in 1979, years after the building had ceased to be used as a gas station.

Jane Puccetti and her husband, Henry, who died in 1999, had owned and operated the 78-year-old Sunshine Food Market, a mom-and-pop grocery store on the southeast corner of Mountain Road and 12th Northwest, since 1962.

Jane Puccetti, 81, fell ill, and the Sunshine Market was closed April 8. "My Mom was in the hospital the next day," Dan Puccetti said, adding that she is not expected recover.

Dan Puccetti said two more vacant buildings his mother owned, on Mountain Road east of the old gas station, will also be demolished at the end of June. He said he does not yet know what will replace them.

Dan Puccetti, a lending coordinator for the New Mexico Loan Development Fund, grew up working in the family's store. He said that as far back as he can remember the building had not operated as a gas station.

When Ed Boles, the city's historic preservation planner, learned the old Gardner station was about to be demolished, he decided to find a way to save it.

Because its original appearance had been altered by removal of the canopy out front, the building cannot qualify for state or federal historic designation, Boles said.

But it recalls a time, he said, before Lomas Boulevard was built, when Mountain Road was a major city street, lined with gas stations and other businesses between Old Town and Martineztown.

Boles approached the Wheels people, who agreed the building deserved to be preserved.

Puccetti is giving the building to Wheels in exchange for its removal from the property. Wheels has hired the Ernie Gallegos Structural Moving Co., to move the building - at a cost of $5,000 - to the SignArt Co. storage yard on Veranda Road Northwest.

Sandy Moran, owner of the sign company, has said he will not charge Wheels for storing the building until it can be prepared for museum display.

Puccetti said he believes the gas station first opened on the corner in the early 1950s. Boles said the building itself is probably older than that, perhaps dating back to 1932, and might have been moved to the corner from a previous location.

"I know that this type and style of prefab station was made before World War II," Boles said. "However old it really is, this building is unique among Albuquerque gas stations."

Before the one-bay garage was added, he said, "it really was little more than a gas-pumping station. Calling it a service station would probably be inaccurate."

Craig said the building, when restored, will become part of a Wheels Route 66 historical exhibit.