The Mullica Hill Garage

1922 · 66 South Main Street

Waypoint G · On the way · Old Town Hall Museum 1 min · Map · About 2 min read

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Before antiques filled these bays, this was a place to buy gasoline, repair a car, or catch a bus.

A tinted postcard of the brick garage with a stepped parapet, a round Sinclair Gasoline sign over the open bay, a bus and gas pumps out front, and a printed caption along the bottom. — The Mullica Hill Garage, advertised on this postcard as "The Home of Bishop Busses."

It sits where the roads meet, in the shadow of Old Town Hall, on the busiest patch of ground in the village. That was no accident. When the automobile changed everything, this is where the village came to keep up with it: to fill the tank with Sinclair gasoline, to have a tire patched or a dead battery swapped, to climb aboard one of M. J. Bishop's buses and ride out toward the rest of the world. Errands, engines, departures, arrivals. The office window in the postcard above carries one more name from those years: the West Jersey Transportation Co.

A man and a boy stand beside an early tow truck with hand-lettered service signs on its side, a wrecked open car hoisted on the hook behind it. — M. J. Bishop's tow truck, Service When You Want It lettered on its side, a wrecked touring car riding the hook behind it.

When the buses finally moved on, the building did not. It went on finding new work, sometimes several trades at once: a lumber shop, a plumber, a sharpening shop, a Southwestern decor store, a hot rod garage, each leaving a little of itself in the brick.

The trades kept coming, and the latest filled the bays with antiques, a century of things worth keeping under one roof. The question on this corner used to be "Where are you headed?" It became "What can't you bring yourself to leave behind?"