Historic service station to be restored

By WAYNE QUESENBERRY/Staff

Plans to restore an historic Wytheville service station progressed Thursday afternoon as bids for the project were opened. Several years in the planning, re-creation of the Great Lakes to Florida Service Station on Tazewell Street is being funded through a matching federal transportation grant.
Built in 1926 by the late Herbert R. Umberger, the station is part of the Willowbrook Jackson/Umberger Homestead Museum property. It is located on four parcels of land – one of which will be donated to the town of Wytheville every five years.
“We’re really excited,” said Seawillow Umberger Jackson, who inherited the property from her father. “I think it’s wonderful that the town got a nice grant to restore the station to its original state.”
Frances Emerson, the town’s director of museums, said the station will be re-created to its 1920s style. The back part of the building, she said, will be a hands-on discovery museum for children with various information available to adults including facts about the Great Lakes to Florida Highway Association.
Assistant Town Manager Stephen A. Moore pointed out that U.S. 21/52 was routed along Tazewell Street into Wytheville when the service station was built. U.S. 21/52, he said, began in the Great Lakes area and ran to Florida.
“Tazewell Street was the original entrance to town,” Moore said. “U.S. 21 came across Big Walker Mountain into Wytheville on Tazewell Street.”
According to Mrs. Jackson, her dad originally operated the business as a Texaco service station. There was an oil changing rack on one side of the building.
He later sold Esso (now Exxon) gasoline before taking out the gas tanks in 1955, she said. Her dad then added a line of grocery items.
“He sold soft drinks, ice cream, cheese and bread,” she added. “At other times over the years, the building was leased as a ceramics shop, a furniture store and a shoe shop. It closed in the 1980s.”
Mrs. Jackson also noted her dad owned 60 acres of land across Tazewell Street and behind Wythe County Community Hospital at one time. He raised cattle and Tennessee Walking Horses, she said.
While the town opened bids for the project Thursday afternoon, a contract has not been awarded yet, according to Moore. There is approximately $50,000 remaining from the original $138,000 transportation enhancement grant, he said, which had been reduced to $135,000.
Moore noted design and consulting fees plus VDOT management fees had to be taken from the $135,000. He reported the town has applied for an additional $77,000 grant from the highway department for the project.
“We should hear something by June,” Moore said Friday morning. “That would give us a mid- to late-spring starting date. VDOT will have to review and approve all the plans again before we can award the contract.”
Wayne Quesenberry can be reached at 228-6611 or wquesenberry@wythenews.com.