Mystery Esso Petrol Station

[blackprince]

Checkout this Leodis photo of a Texaco garage near the Westgate roundabout dated 1970-73.
http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL

[hyperion]

I've looked at this picture for weeks, And the building is saying i might be a telephone exchange?.To me the long metal windows seen too industrial to be office's , and i can just imagine those thingy me bobs (is that a technical term - our a piece of music maybe)behind the windows.As member raveydavy said it may not be in leeds.

[tomq]

[blackprince]

I've looked at this picture for weeks, And the building is saying i might be a telephone exchange?.To me the long metal windows seen too industrial to be office's , and i can just imagine those thingy me bobs (is that a technical term - our a piece of music maybe)behind the windows.As member raveydavy said it may not be in leeds.

Funny you should say this because the Texaco station in the 70-73 photo is only a stone's throw from Telephone House, a glass clad building on Westgate roundabout. I have no idea what the windows were like at the back of Telephone House or whether it contained an exchange, but note that the building is about the same height as the one in the background of the mystery Esso station, also the building is lozenge shaped which could account for the odd perspective , and the corners of the building are not load bearing ( as noted earlier).
http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL

[String o' beads]

Bit tentative, but possibly the writing on the roundabout sign where it points to go straight on might be 'Brighouse'.

If so, and if this filling station is/was in Leeds, would we be looking at a the A58? This brings me back to my original thought that the roundabout in question is the old Westgate roundabout. But I can't for the life of me figure out which street this might be - so much has been knocked down and rebuilt around there.

[blackprince]

Equally tentative, but I thought it might be Woodhouse or even Leeds Playhouse (on 2 lines).

[mhoulden]

It looks like the Texaco garage was buried under a pile of rubble by 1974:


It's not impossible for a building to have no supporting columns at the corners, as Telephone House demonstrates, but that's a different building. The rather ugly design does look like some sort of public sector-type building like a telephone exchange or council offices from the 60s or 70s, but there are no exchanges in Leeds I know that look like that. If it was in the YEP it could be anywhere in West Yorks, or even further afield.

[mhoulden]

Found it. It's on Hedon Road in Hull. Here it is on Google Streetview: http://goo.gl/maps/sXRy2. That explains why we couldn't find it anywhere in Leeds. The big building is the old Rank Hovis mill on Clarence Street. The road curves round sharply behind the billboard (which is still there) and the roundabout (which isn't there any more) is the junction of Clarence Street and Grand Union Street. As for how I found it, I was checking Flickr groups of old petrol stations when I found the Rank Hovis mill. I nosed around Streetview until I found a match for the lower building. The petrol pumps are gone but the place still services cars.

[hyperion]

Excellent work mhoulden, you may have found it just in time,looks like its ready to be demolished.

[yorkiesknob]

At last , well done Sherlock.