Feature Stories

On warm summer evenings, Station 101 comes alive. Maybe it's a line of gleaming Chevys, Mustangs and vintage Volkswagens from another era. Maybe more than 200 motorcycles have packed into the lot. Often, live music drifts across the Oval as people gather around German-style beer tables overlooking the Souhegan River.

For a location that spent decades selling gasoline, Station 101 has once again become one of the places where Milford comes together.

That outcome wasn't accidental.

For years, Chip Pollard traveled the country through his work with a youth field hockey and lacrosse organization. Along the way, he kept an eye out for old service stations that had been transformed into coffee shops and gathering places.

The fascination began years earlier, when Pollard worked at a Mobil station on Long Island as a teenager, pumping gas and changing tires. They were almost always located on prominent street corners, preserving a little piece of Main Street Americana while giving the community somewhere new to gather.

"I kept my eyes open for the perfect location," Pollard recalled. One morning, walking back to the car with his wife after breakfast at Café on the Oval, he glanced across the street. The tow trucks were gone. The piles of old equipment that had hidden the building for years had disappeared. A "For Sale" sign stood in the lot.

"I looked around," he said. "I thought, 'This is it, right here.'"

As Pollard walked through the cluttered property, he made another discovery. Hidden behind decades of tow trucks, old engines and repair-shop debris was an unobstructed view of Great Brook flowing into the Souhegan River. Standing there, he could already picture people sitting at outdoor tables along the water. The station, he realized, wasn't just the right building—it was the right setting.

What stood before him didn't look like much. What Pollard imagined, however, was something entirely different. Nearly everything visitors see today had to be rebuilt. The floors were torn out. The plumbing and electrical systems were replaced. New sewer lines and bathrooms were installed. Standing inside the finished Station 101, Pollard gestured around the room as he described stripping the old garage almost to its bones—even down to the sewer lines.

"It needed everything," he said. "We literally had to rip this place apart."

Working alongside partner Gage Perry, the two spent nearly two years rebuilding the station from the ground up. COVID delayed supplies, expanded the scope of the project and pushed costs hundreds of thousands of dollars beyond their original estimates. But the delays also gave them time to rethink the building.

Originally, Pollard envisioned something closer to an old garage. Then his daughters offered some advice.

"They looked at me and said, 'Dad, what are you thinking? If a woman isn't comfortable here, she'll never come back—and she won't let the husband or boyfriend come back.'"

As Pollard and Perry rebuilt the station, the project evolved. The bathrooms became brand new. The interior grew brighter and more welcoming and Pollard's wife added the hanging plants that have become part of Station 101's welcoming atmosphere. The result, Pollard said with a laugh, is that women now make up the majority of Station 101's social media followers.

The restoration was never just about serving beer. Pollard wanted to restore a piece of Milford's history.

Long before automobiles, a saw and gristmill occupied the property, powered by water diverted from Great Brook. According to Pollard's research, the site later became home to Milford's first fuel pump in 1903. Two small SOCONY stations followed in 1924 and 1935, before the Mobil station familiar to generations of Milford residents was built in 1957.

Historic photographs line the walls. Vintage gas pumps stand outside. Even the business's logo is a nod to the days when today's Route 101A was simply Route 101, before construction of the bypass routed through traffic around downtown Milford.

One unexpected chapter of the story began after the restaurant opened. Pollard didn't create the weekly classic car gathering, but when the previous organizers were ready to step away, he was happy to continue the tradition. The motorcycle nights came about in much the same way, when a local riding group asked if they could begin gathering at Station 101.

Chip's answer? "Absolutely!"

The result is one of the Oval's most unexpected sights. As drivers round the Oval—watching for pedestrians and yielding to traffic—their eyes are almost inevitably drawn toward Station 101. Depending on the evening, the parking lot may suddenly be filled with brightly colored Chevys sporting tailfins, 1970s muscle cars, vintage Volkswagens, or row after row of gleaming motorcycles, transforming one corner of downtown Milford into something that feels almost transported from another era.

The same corner where Milford residents once pulled in to top off their gas tanks has become one of downtown's busiest gathering places. Perhaps that's why Pollard says the compliments that mean the most aren't about the food or the beer. They're about what the building has become.

Looking around today, it isn't hard to understand why. For years, the little gas station had almost disappeared behind tow trucks, repair equipment and decades of accumulated clutter. It took someone willing to look beyond what it had become and imagine what it could be. Today, its white walls, vintage pumps and busy patio have made it one of the Oval's landmarks once again. □