Shuey Shell Filling Station
ca. 1928 or ca. 1935
121 Patton Ave., Asheville, NC
Standing
Commercial
David R. Black, Historic Architectural Resources of Downtown Asheville, North Carolina (1979).
The date and designer(s) of this small but striking moderne-Art Deco filling station remain unclear. It has been dated ca. 1928 and credited to Greene and Rogers. The Asheville city directory of 1929 is the first to show a filling station at that address, which is thought to be this one. But since Greene and Rogers’s association did not begin until the mid-1930s, either the date 1928 or the identification of the firm is in error. It could have been designed by Greene in the late 1920s (possibly with young Rogers somehow involved?). Or it might be a successor building on the site, designed by Greene and Rogers after Rogers went to work for Greene in the 1930s. Some sources identify Rogers as the architect and state that this was one of several filling stations he planned for W. C. Shuey’s distributorship; the other examples have been lost. Further documentation is sought to clarify the situation.