Photograph by Caitlin Abrams
Frank LLoyd Wright's Cloquet MN gas station
How did the most prolific architect of the 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright, come to design a gas station… in Cloquet? Logically, it began with his plans to design a utopia he coined Broadacre City in the 1930s.
But Wright’s utopian plans didn’t see the light of day until the late 1950s, when he approached former client R. W. Lindholm, owner of Best Oil, about bringing his service station plans to fruition. And in 1958, the Lindholm Oil Company Service Station became the only design from Broadacre City to make the leap into reality.
The station currently resides on the National Register of Historic Places but was at risk of being torn down and redeveloped—that is, until Minnesota native Andrew Volna purchased the station from Lindholm’s grandchildren in 2018. Volna has kept its doors open since.
Wright included an observation deck in his design to allow customers to wait while their cars were being serviced. It also boasts a monument spire with the architect’s name. “It rises like a beacon from the cantilevered copper roof,” Volna says. “It’s my favorite thing about the station.”
A Wright-designed table was stolen from the Lindholm Station shortly before the station was purchased in 2018. But without a clear title, the table is worth nothing and can’t be sold without consequences. “It’s like trying to sell a painting stolen from the Louvre—everyone knows it’s stolen,” Volna says.
Frank Lloyd Wright had a unique way of signing his designs: with a Cherokee Red ceramic tile, complete with his signature, that was embedded into the building. You won’t see a whole tile at the Lindholm Station, though—the tile chipped after someone drove their camper over the pumps and into the observation deck.
Chris Chartier, who has been running the gas and service station business at Lindholm since 1982, says he couldn’t even begin to estimate how many visitors the station sees per year. “We get at least 5,000 hits on Google per month,” he says. “It just amazes me.”
