R. W. Lindholm Service Station

The R.W. Lindholm Service Station in Cloquet, Minnesota, USA, is derived from a design by famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright as part of his Broadacre City project, a Utopian vision of a new type of urban landscape. It is the only gas station designed by Wright.

Built in 1956, its design is derived from the Broadacre Standardized Overhead Service Station which was designed as part of the Broadacre City project in the 1930s. The idea was essentially totally de-centralized American urban landscape. The plan was never implemented anywhere, but it did foreshadow the decentralization that occurred after World War II. Studding the landscape of Broadacre were Usonian houses, solitary skyscrapers, and a wide variety of buildings needed to service the community. Wright and his apprentices designed and included many of these in Broadacre City models that toured the country.

This gas station turned out to be the only part of Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre designs that made it into reality. In deviation from the original Broadacre design, the Lindholm Station has gas pumps on the ground instead of overhead fuel lines. (This aspect of the design was changed to meet safety regulations.) Another feature of the original design is a second-story service waiting area over the attendant's area. This space is also found in the actual building, but is currently not used for this purpose.

Watch the little gas station.... In our present gasoline service station you may see a crude beginning to such important advance decentralization; also see the beginning of the future humane establishment we are now calling the free city. Wherever service stations are located naturally these so often ugly and seemingly insignificant features will survive and expand. ... is all around us in the haphazard making, the apparent forces to the contrary notwithstanding. All about us and no plan. The old order is breaking up

- Frank Lloyd Wright, 1930

This working Spur service station is open to the public. It is located at the corner of Minnesota State Highway 33 and Minnesota State Highway 45 in downtown Cloquet (approximately 25 miles South of Duluth, Minnesota).

It was constructed in 1956 after the pre-fab Usonian James McBean Residence in Rochester, Minnesota, and before the Marin County Civic Center in California, during a year that saw construction of 18 Wright buildings, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The Lindholm family had previously had Wright design their home "Mäntylä" in 1952, also in Cloquet, Minnesota. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 11, 1985.