Coffee Pot (US-11)

A round, metal-clad building with a handle and spout attached stands on US 60 between Lexington and Buena Vista, Virginia, built to look like a giant coffee pot. SAH Archipedia, citing the University of Virginia Press’s Buildings of Virginia, says the Wills family built it as a restaurant and coffee shop and that its position drew the attention, and the business, of travellers. It describes an aluminium-clad structure on a concrete slab originally painted red to simulate a stove burner, and calls such novelty buildings “a form of commercial advertising”. Atlas Obscura and a family member quoted on Roadside America give the year as 1959 and the builder as Kenneth Wills, and say the family usually called it a teapot. A 2016 Gardens to Gables post says the restaurant ran until around 1978. Atlas Obscura adds that original plans may have included a globe on top that lit up as if percolating, and that after the restaurant closed a beer and wine bar, a gas station, a vacation canoe rental, a fresh fish market and later an art studio and gallery occupied the building. In October 2025 Amazing America TV reported that the art studio is gone but that “the house is still photo op-ready”. A September 2026 local travel guide says it currently sits without a business inside, and Atlas Obscura marks the business permanently closed.