Is e-commerce giant Amazon.com getting into the brick-and-mortar retail business? The online retailer was granted a patent today for a building design that looks a lot like a mini-store location.

The patent, number D593,208 is for the "ornamental design for a building structure" that is a box-like with some kind of awnings. The patent application was originally filed Oct. 31, 2007, and lists Michael Ausich, Peter Stocker, and Stephenie Landry of Seattle as inventors.

What's Amazon's strategy here? Amazon briefly experimented with pickup locations for its Amazon Fresh grocery delivery service in the Seattle area, and the black and white images submitted with the patent application look at lot like those pickup stations.

Amazon quietly dropped the pickup service in February 2008, but will the ecommerce giant ever get into the traditional retail game?

Here are more of the patent images:

Here's one of the Amazon Fresh pickup stations, circa Dec. 2007:

[Flickr photo via cheukiecfu]

Thanks for the tip to patent-watcher theodp.