Perry's Service Center, formerly known as Perry's Downtown Exxon, is located in the 400 block of North Greene Street, a block off North Elm. On January 26, 2015, The Greensboro News and Record wrote an article about Perry's being the oldest, downtown gas station even in the early 1980s. As the article points out, in 1953, less than a decade after WWII, there were 47 places to buy gas downtown. Journalist Jim Schlosser cleverly combed Greensboro city directories and surmised that gas was first pumped there in 1929. *
A couple of years ago, we were walking past the property the day Exxon was leaving the site. A couple of guys were called in to remove Exxon signage and they didn't know what was happening next. According to the Winston Salem Journal (3/26/24), as confirmed by their perusing the Register of Deeds filings, a Clemmons group purchased the site for $502,000. This past December 29th, we were urban walking and noticed a fresh paint job on the building with the addition of yellow on the canopy. This must be new, because yellow was never an Exxon color. Also, the concrete car bumpers have been painted bright red. Another sign of life was that bay being partially open. However, what really caught our eye was the red, blue, and yellow composition against square and rectangular shapes. If the 20th century Dutch painter Piet Mondrian's canvases came to life in a street scene, they would not look unlike this scene!
Happy Monday!
*If you miss Mr. Schlosser's journalism and you like a good stories about Greensboro, see the original article HERE.
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