Former Gas Station Located between Little Rock and Searcy

Roundtop Filling Station, Sherwood Arkansas

Date added: May 29, 2024

South elevation. Gas Island and sign post on right side (2003)

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The town of Sherwood was incorporated in 1948. Before that date it was a small, largely rural community to the north of Little Rock. The City of Sherwood annexed the area where the Roundtop Filling Station sits in 1975. The property was given to the City of Sherwood by the heirs of the last private owner, George Brown.

In the 1920s, Gay Oil Company held a filling station design competition and the architect John Parks Almand won the competition with a "mushroom-shaped" design. Almand's design was a whimsical structure designed for small city lots and provided a distinctive visual element. While a significant departure from the Almand design, the Roundtop Filling Station draws an architectural reference to the station designs of independent oil and gas companies from the prior decade. While the large oil corporations established a standard corporate architecture, many smaller gas companies opted for whimsical designs that had a strong visual impact to entice customers. The Roundtop Filling Station is a part of this architectural trend.

According to the original operator of the station, W. D. Williford, the station was constructed in 1936 for Pierce Oil Company by Justin Matthews. Pierce Oil was one of the "baby Standards" that followed the breakup of the Standard Oil Trust in 1911. Pierce was awarded the area of operation of southern Missouri, Arkansas, western Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. Pierce Oil went out of business in 1940 and was purchased by Sinclair Oil. From historic photographs, the Roundtop Station was also operated as a DX Oil Company station for a period. Williford operated the station from 1936 to 1972. Williford purchased the station in 1957 and sold it in 1999 to George Brown. Being ideally situated on U.S. Highway 67 between St. Louis and Little Rock, the station had a steady business with travelers. For the better part of the mid-twentieth century, it had the only modern restrooms between Searcy, Arkansas, and Little Rock. Williford recalls that "pumping 100 gallons of gas into the glass bowl pump was a BIG day." Electric pumps were installed in 1941. In later years, the station was operated as a DX Gas Station.

Building Description

The Roundtop Filling Station's defining characteristics are the octagonal main structure with a double-hipped turret roof, stucco walls, and arched windows and entries. Drawing architectural cues from gas station designs of the prior decade, Craftsman, and Spanish and English Revival Styles, the Roundtop Filling Station is an example of the free-flowing architecture used by smaller independent gas and oil companies between the 1920s and the 1970s to highlight their distinctiveness. The distinctive double-hipped turret roof provided a visual attraction for automobile travelers on the road to and from Little Rock and St. Louis. The structure sits on a concrete slab foundation, has buff-colored stucco walls, arched window openings and entries, a complex roof, and exposed rafter tails. The site also has a lamp/signpost and a concrete gas island.

From the east facade, the only visible element of the property is the octagonal main room. A single, blue-painted metal door is visible on this facade, with a simple, red-painted wood door frame flush with the exterior of the building. Buff-colored stucco walls rise vertically to the top of the door frame and "mushroom" overhead to near horizontal. The roof is a double-hipped turret with exposed rafter tails and red composite shingles. The turret roof is capped by a wood weather vane decorative element. The wood finial is octagonal with a miniature railing one-third of the way up. The finial is capped by a birdhouse with a large wooden vane extending from one end.

The north facade begins with the octagonal room at the front and then extends west to a second structure connected by an arched-covered walk through. On the north facade of the octagonal room is an arched window opening with a single, double-hung sash window with six panes in the top sash and six in the lower sash, and a lunette window above. At the rear (West) end of the octagonal room, a walled walkway extends west at the same width with an arched opening facing north. A window bay extends past the facade topped by a wall dormer. The window in the bay appears to have been a fixed, single pane, but is not extant. The window frame is a simple wood molding flush with the facade. The next bay to the west is a single, double-hung sash window with a single pane over a single pane. The roof that extends from the octagonal main room is a gable to hipped roof with a roof crest that ends at an eave vent in the gable with two hips extending from the vent to the corners at the rear of the structure. The eave line extends further down along the extended bay than at the rear of the structure with exposed rafter tails along the whole facade.

The rear or West facade has a single portico entrance extended past the rear facade capped with a rear gabled roof. The entrance has a single metal door framed by simple wood molding flush with the stucco exterior. The gable vent has horizontal slats with a thick wood molding above. The eaves of the main roof and those of the portico have exposed rafter tails.

The South facade is a mirror image of the North facade.

Interior

The large octagonal room is a single chamber with entrances on the east and west walls and windows on the north and south walls. The interior walls are plastered and the ceiling is flat. From the west door of the octagonal room, a covered walkway extends to the rear of the structure with arched openings to the north and south. Two restrooms are located at the end of the walkway. The restroom to the south has original fixtures and a south-facing window, the north restroom has a north-facing window and all fixtures have been removed. The last room is only accessible from the rear (west) and has windows on the north and south facades.

At the front (east) of the property sits the original gas island. The island is a concrete block approximately six inches high, 12 feet long, and two and a half feet wide with rounded ends. The original pumps have been removed, but there remain connectors for two pumps.

Adjacent to the Gas Island on its south end, is the original light and sign post. The post has a pyramidal concrete base with a square metal post extending to a height of approximately 15 feet. The post curves at the top towards the east with a connector for the sign, which is not extant. From the curved portion, two round lights extend to the north and south to illuminate the sign.