Customers will once again be saying “fill ‘er up” when they pull up to a former Gilmore Oil gas station on Highland Avenue that is scheduled to open tomorrow as a new Starbucks.

A new Starbucks at the corner of Highland and Willoughby avenues will allow motorists curbside service. (photo by Edwin Folven)

The former gas station at the southwest corner of Highland and Willoughby avenues had been vacant for the past six years and was in need of repairs prior to Starbucks leasing the site and completing plans to turn the building into a new walk-up and drive-through outlet, according to Lambert Giessinger, historic preservation architect for the Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources. The gas station opened in 1935 as a Gilmore Oil gas station, and was franchised by an independent operator known as Holmes and Moore. After Gilmore Oil was sold in 1945 to the Socony-Vacuum oil company — a precursor to Mobil Oil — the station later operated as a Mobil and Texaco gas station.

The gas station closed at the site in the mid-1990s, and the building later housed a snack shop and an auto detail shop. It had remained vacant prior to Starbucks restoring and converting the building.

“Starbucks is always looking for great locations to better meet the needs of our customers, and we are happy to confirm that we will be opening a new location at 859 N. Highland Ave in Hollywood [on] Friday, March 27,” Starbucks spokesperson Haley Neiman said in a statement. “This store will feature a walk up ordering window and drive through, and will employ 20 [employees]. The store will preserve and highlight design elements of the historic gas station building, such as the restoration of the wood and aluminum exterior of the building.”

A photograph circa 1939 or 1940 shows an unidentified operator at the former Gilmore Oil Company gas station on Highland Avenue. (photo courtesy of the A.F. Gilmore Company)

Giessinger said site was designated an historic-cultural monument in 1990 based on its art deco design and the fact that it was one of the last remaining examples of service stations from the 1930s remaining in Los Angeles. The designation precludes the building from being demolished. Geissinger said one of the roof canopies was damaged in 2008 when a driver in a truck cut through the property and struck the building.

“It was all put back together,” Giessinger added. “It think it had already closed as a detail shop by then and was vacant.

The property was once owned by actor Wallace Beery, who died in 1949. It changed hands at least twice since. According to Giessinger, it is currently owned by a private individual named Jacqueline Ackerman, who leased the site to Starbucks.

Brett Arena, archivist for the A.F. Gilmore Company, which owns the Original Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax and was the founder and owner of the Gilmore Oil Company, said he is pleased that the site has been restored.

“It think it’s terrific that this project has come to fruition,” Arena said. “To see it actually become something after so many false starts is a terrific thing.”

Arena recently acquired a photograph of the station for the A.F. Gilmore Company’s archives, and added that it is the only photograph of the site from the Gilmore Oil Company era that is known to exist. Arena said the identity of an individual in the photograph is unknown, but he surmised it was one of the franchisees circa 1939 or 1940.

“It came out of a scrapbook and someone put it on eBay. Gilmore Oil used to deal with independent operators,” Arena said. “A lot were mom and pop shops in [partnership] with Gilmore Oil.”

Some motorists who recently passed by the newly restored building were inquisitive about the new Sta-rbucks, which has a retro-appearance.

“It looks really cool,” Hollywood resident Shannon Wright said. “They usually knock down old buildings like this and I’m glad to see it’s still here. I’ll be stopping by.”