A lot at 1455 Irving St. and the house next door were listed for sale together last spring for $3.1 million, but since the house sold separately, the former gas station is back on the market.

According to Redfin, the four-bedroom, three-story house next to the vacant lot at 1314 16th Ave. sold for $1.6 million. In a 2007 interview, Jack Goldsworthy, the gas station's last owner, said the house was constructed at the corner of 16th & Irving, but was later relocated to give the station more space.

Today, the lot is occupied only by the former service station office; permits indicate that a one-story building that stood at the rear of the lot was demolished in 2012. Constructed from brick, the one-room office shows signs of serious deterioration, with large exterior cracks visible.

Historian Woody LaBounty said the Planning Department expressed interest in preserving the gas station in years past, but given the City's current housing emergency, "they're probably just waiting for the next earthquake to knock it down."

City records show that the parcel and its structure are "age-eligible" for historic preservation, but no formal designation has been made. Planning's Historic Preservation Staff is reportedly conducting a Neighborhood Commercial Corridors Historic Resources Survey of the area; we've contacted them to determine whether the survey is still ongoing.

"It's a really cool structure," said LaBounty. "I would think that there's some way to build around it, or incorporate it into the site." For LaBounty, the gas station, which also operated for a time as a car dealership, represents an important aspect of American culture.

Private car ownership created a service market for repair work and fuel, which "really helped spread development across the city," said La Bounty. "It used to be that neighborhood gas stations were the newfangled technology of their time." Today, "you can hardly find one," he added, noting that many former stations in the Sunset have been (or will be) developed into housing.

"I don't want to save every Chevron or ARCO, but this one goes back to the very beginning when 'oil stations,' as they called them, were new," said La Bounty. First opened in 1926, the Goldsworthy station might be the oldest of its kind in San Francisco, he said.

Via email, District 5 Supervisor London Breed said she's spoken to "several residents in the area" who've expressed "mixed feelings" about the future of the vacant lot.

"Some want to see it active as a park or place for kids and families to gather, others suggested single family homes," she said. "Regardless, there will be a community process so that the residents of the area and the public have an opportunity to provide input on whatever is proposed."

State and local environmental rules require former gas station sites to remove underground fuel tanks and clean up the soil before they can be sold or repurposed. The listing's information packet advises prospective buyers to visit Planning "to investigate possible land uses and restrictions" and disclaims that "neither the seller nor the seller's agent guarantee any uses" for the property.

"Many, many people would be very sad to see it go," said LaBounty. "They don't want a chain-link fence around it, they want something done with it."