Occasionally I can still stumble across a building in this city that I have never seen before. Such is the case with this old gas station at the corner of Shepherd and Elsmere.
Likely built in the late 1920’s, this is the only one of its type left in the city that I know of. I’m not sure what purpose this little building holds today, there is a larger garage on the east half of the property.
A shot of the 1937 Fire Insurance Map shows the station in service, with the pumps along Elsmere. Seems to me to be a bit of an odd location for a service station…
ahh the ol hood. andrew, this place and the garage next to it are “willy’s auto” as you can see creativly put on that sign lol. he’s a nice old man who’s a shade tree mechanic. fairly cheap prices and you can talk to him like a human being, and him to you. my freind and i used to bring our cars there once and a while. there is also a gigantic dog named Beau i beleive who resides in that astro van you can see behind the cougar in the top picture, oh….abd you can actually see his massive hulking body laying on the ground with those little kids in the second pic. there’s a place just across elsmere that used to be a corner store on the ground floor. i used to be able to pick up smoke for my mom there when i was like 6 or 7 lol
sorry….i guess i didn’t say what purpose that building serves lol. that the office where you pay and his computer and whatnot are.
smells like dogs lol
Yup memories for sure….wow I remember when this was a happenin little place…. yeah the apt. across was a convenience store in the bottom for the longest time…as well as just next door on th ecorner of Parent and Shepherd was Esso Variety…but that is long gone a swell I believe….
Hey Aaron ever think our neghbourhood would be the subject of a vanishing city memories type blog LOL!
Love it Andrew Keep it up..as always I love the memories!! : )
Hmm..
Andrew you just changed the pics of Willy’s Auto? They were there and now they aren’t and its a different building all together ??!?!?!
just drove through the ol hood yesterday….and Big Ol Beau was out barking at some kids…what a massive dog!!!! …maybe he’s why the building has survived no one can get close enough to do anything with it LOL!!!
Anyway….seems like its still a really active little service centre…
yeah, willy is actually kept pretty busy. he is a huge dog eh?
hi first of all i love this whole metropolis site…..I take pics around town also of potential dying building….
my point in typing this is……big dog is called Ben…
willie (gui) is real……….great guy to chat with ,yes his office is little building with another medium sized dog inside
BEN! that’s it! thanks tony 🙂
i recently discovered that “willie’s” name is actually Gui, and as it turns out, he was a freind of the family waaaaaaaaay back when, and we got our old dog off of him, bouvier/lab mix. Ben there is more then likely a cousin of some sort to our dog. he lives just at parent and hanna, we lived at elsmere and hanna.