Business hopes renovation fuels visibility

Comfort Keepers takes building back to roots as gasoline station

Seth Movsovitz has found a sure-fire way to attract attention to his Lawrence business: Put a 15-foot pump that advertises gasoline for 17 cents a gallon in front of the office.

Movsovitz recently relocated his home health care business, Comfort Keepers, from an office on West Sixth Street to the former Animal Crackers building at Ninth and Indiana streets.

But Movsovitz didn’t just move his business. He also undertook a renovation project. He and his brother, Max Movsovitz, decided to research the history of the building and make it look like a Marland service station, which was the building’s first user in 1927.

The project included restoring the building’s brick to its original color, adding a false door to show where the building’s original entrance was, building new planter boxes to match the station’s originals and filling a conference room with 1920s service station and Lawrence memorabilia. But the “icing on the cake,” Seth Movsovitz said, was the 1920s-replica, gravity-fed gasoline pump in front of the building.

“People are constantly driving by looking at the pump and then looking at our sign and trying to figure out whether we’re actually a gas station,” Seth Movsovitz said. “We’re definitely not going to complain if people are doing a double take at our building.”

Increased visibility was a major reason for the move of the business, which provides in-home health care services like meal preparation and personal hygiene assistance to people needing help to remain in their home.

Seth Movsovitz said he wasn’t planning on returning the building to its gasoline-station look when he purchased it in March. It was the idea of Max Movsovitz, who serves on a historic preservation board for the city of Topeka and is writing a book about the history of Topeka’s former Garlinghouse House Plan Co.

Max Movsovitz began researching the history of the building in February.

What he found was that the building started out as a Marland Oil filling station in 1927, but the company was bought by Conoco in 1930. The building remained a service station until 1962. It was vacant for several years before McGrew Realty opened its offices in the building in 1966.

Max Movsovitz, left, and his brother Seth Movsovitz pose by a replica gasoline pump at 900 Ind. They remodeled the 1,200-square-foot building behind the pump to look like the former Marland service station, which was the building's first user in 1927. Seth Movsovitz is using the building to house his home health care business, Comfort Keepers. The two had their picture taken by an unidentified man at the company's open house on May 14.

Seth Movsovitz, who opened Lawrence’s Comfort Keepers two years ago, said the entire renovation had cost less than $10,000 because he and his brother provided most of the labor. He said the work, which was completed May 14, was worth it.

He said the building had sparked several conversations, including one with area resident Rex Nicolay, who as a child used to turn the hand crank on the gas pump for a penny a day.

“I enjoy pulling up and seeing the gas pump,” Seth Movsovitz said. “It’s fun to come to work and look at our building.”

— Journal-World intern Mike Bauer contributed information to this report.