In last week’s What Do You Think You’re Looking At?, I featured a Starbucks in Fairfax County that used to be a bank. Not terribly interesting—but a curiously similar structure type, given the very different businesses. Especially the drive-thru! But the building itself was a standard box.

I got a couple of comments pointing me to more interesting building conversions by Starbucks. Both of them are old auto garages/gas stations, which, along with banks, is a common previous use for coffee shop buildings.

This one is in Fort Wayne, Indiana:

And this one is in Glen Rock, New Jersey:

I don’t know how this curious building began life—probably as a now-defunct gas station brand—but this is it pre-Starbucks:

TrainBoard is a model railroad website! You never know where you’ll find a piece of information.

I also found a few other coffee shops, including former banks with vaults!

This one, in Greer, South Carolina:

And this one, in Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania (nice name):

But best for last, and back to Starbucks. You see this run-down midcentury building in Redlands, California?

After initially proposing to demolish it, after a historic preservation battle Starbucks refurbished it, including the neon sign!

From a news item (yeah, they meant mid-20th century):

The “roadside architecture” of the mid-19th century gave the route a distinctive and modern streetscape. Few of the original structures along this part of the highway still exist — only a couple of former gas stations converted into repair shops or taco shacks.

The Starbucks restaurant east of Citrus Avenue is a rare exception. Built as a Baker’s Restaurant in the early 1960s, it later became La Rosita Drive-Up for decades before it was purchased by Starbucks and scheduled for demolition. Redlands Conservancy members and commissioners of the Historic and Scenic Preservation Commission advocated that the structure be adaptively reused, and Starbucks headquarters agreed. What passers-by see today is a renovated mid-century modern building, complete with one of two remaining neon signs in Redlands.

This sort of thing was really one of the first urbanist-adjacent things that interested me—just the way landscapes evolve, and later the question of how the land-use rules shape that evolution. God knows I think enough about that, but sometimes nothing piques my interest like a little old building along the highway with a longer life than anyone would have bet.

Related Reading:

A Universe of Uses

Drop Off Your Car for Coffee

“Excuse Me, Where’s the Car Aisle?”

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