I’ll probably never get used to the fact that British Petroleum (BP) got rid of the ‘Sohio’ brand name after the oil giant acquired Standard Oil of Ohio. Even though the ’Sohio’ brand disappeared in the early 1990s, I’m still not over it – almost 30 years later.
BP did, however, bring back the well-remembered Amoco brand in 2017 (after getting rid of it twenty years ago). So maybe there’s hope for ‘Sohio’ being reintroduced at some point, if it makes economic sense to BP.
Anyway, back in 1938, ‘Sohio' was a well-established brand in our area, since its gas stations had been around since 1912. The opening of a new Sohio station was a big event, and that’s the subject of today’s post.
Below is the large ad that appeared in the Lorain Journal on Friday, August 26, 1938 announcing the official opening of a new Sohio station the next day.
The new Sohio Servicenter was located at 30th and Pearl. The staff consisted of Michael Kocak (the Dealer), Michael Kertez and Pete Dobrosky.
The ad copy makes a convincing argument to stop in: sanitary, sparkling-clean rest rooms; free, courteous services, including air for tires, water for radiators, windshield cleaning, road maps, touring guides; free battery service. The station also sold Philco Radios and Atlas Tires.
I like the tagline at the end: "Bring your car up to Standard!”
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Today, the Sohio station’s old location at 2957 Pearl Avenue is the home of Roman’s Groceries. It looks like the same building as the gas station, just heavily remodeled.
2 comments:
I always thought that business looked like an old gas station or something.Just makes you wonder how many cars have passed through its parking lot over the years.If you zoom in on the modern day photo of Roman's Groceries you can see either a drug deal or some other "service" type transaction going down.So it's good to see that it's still a service station after all these years.
Sohio was the only brand of gas my mother used; I can still hear her asking for "a dollar's worth of Boron".
There was a Sohio station just south of us, on the NE corner of 21st and Elyria, one at the SW corner of 21st and Reid, and one just north of the Broadway/Elyria Avenue "Y"; that one I remember by name, Sharrock's.
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