The Former 1923 Pulver’s Gas Station Still Stands in Old Town
Don’cha just love these old buildings that pop up?
This little building at 127 W. Grand River in Lansing is now an ice cream stop, but once upon a time it was a corner gas station operated by the Pulver Brothers.
Elmer Pulver owned a local hardware store but he needed more. So he and his brother Ben founded their own offshoot of a Sinclair gas station and named it the Pulver Brothers Sinclair Oil Company.
By 1924, the Pulvers had four gas filling stations throughout Lansing, including this one from 1923. They didn’t stop there, however, and by 1930 they owned eight gas stations.
The Pulvers gave up this Grand River location and turned it over to new owners in 1938. The structure continued as a little filling station until 1953, then it was given up again. New ownership threw out the gas station idea and turned it into a dry cleaners.
The dry cleaners went bellyup, the building was vacated, and it sat empty for over fifty years. In 2011, under new ownership, it became a drive-thru coffee shop and eatery. Three years later, it was closed again and in 2016 it was turned into a Scoop's Ice Cream Parlor, which it remains to this day.
That same year, Pulver’s was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The marker reads: “As demand for oil and automobiles increased in the early 1920s, brothers Benjamin A. (1875-1960) and Elmer E. (1880-1965) Pulver formed the Pulver Oil Company to distribute Sinclair Oil products. In 1923 they built this filling station on Franklin Street. Renamed Grand River Avenue, the street soon became part of M-16, which linked Detroit and Grand Haven. In 1926 it became the first all-paved highway across the state. The Pulvers owned eight filling stations by 1930.”