This spring, a plane-shaped piece of roadside architecture is preparing for takeoff.

Built as a Texaco gas station in 1930 in Powell, Tenn., the small building was falling down when a group formed four years ago. "It was self-destructing," says Rock Bernard, head of the Airplane Filling Station Preservation Association. "It had been abused. It had had little or no maintenance at all."

Now the nonprofit, hoping to create an office or visitors center, is fixing the plane's right wing and windows.