The Garages

     When I was a kid, one of our forms of entertainment was to go to the Prospect Street
    garages, get up on the roof of one of them, and then jump from one to another to another.
    There were a good many of them, but  they were only about a foot apart, so it wasn't much of
    a challenge and it would be more accurate to say we stepped from one to the next than to
    say we jumped. In addition to the garages off of Prospect Street, there were others at the
    end of Jones Road, between Park Street and the intersection of Inman and Beech, off of Hill
    Street, on Cemetery Street and on the west side of Bancroft Park. There may have been
    others I'm forgetting. (The brick garages of Lake Street and Lower Jones came later than the
    wooden ones; the early fifties.) The following story on the garages was taken from a
    newspaper article. I don't have the name of the paper or a date, but it was when you could
    buy a new Plymouth, the full sized, four-door model, for $695, according to an ad on the
    same page. It doesn't appear to have been the Milford News.

      The pretty homes of the workers of the Draper Corporation are not disfigured by unsightly
    garages, nor are the backyards of the town littered with a lot of junk and abandoned flivvers.  
    The motorists of Hopedale enjoy the advantages of "communistic garaging," which not only
    means much from an aesthetic point of view to the town in general, but serves to minimize
    the fire hazard. At strategic spots throughout the town large areas of land are set off and
    dedicated solely to garages. These spots are usually hidden from the roadway, and
    approached through lanes and paths lined with trees and shrubbery. In a clearing will be
    found the garages, all neatly arranged, Each man must build his own garage, conforming to
    plans laid down by the Draper Corporation. If the garage owner decides to clear out for
    another town, he is allowed to demolish his garage and take the pieces with him. (I think
    they were built of "shop wood," which included packing boxes and other wood, available free
    or at very little cost at the Draper shop.) He may sell his garage - not the land, though, for that
    belongs to the Drapers.

       Here's a story Carol Whyte told me recently. Frannie Fogan, who grew up on Inman Street
    in the fifties, entered a contest and won a horse. Having no other place to keep it, her family
    asked for and received permission from the Draper official in charge of such things, to keep
    the horse in their garage. It was one of the group between Park and Inman. A bit of the
    nearby woods was cleared and the garage was moved onto it. I don't know how long the
    horse lived, but it seems to me that the stable/garage was still there in the seventies.

      The picture below was taken where Inman Street meets Beech Street. The others are
    behind Prospect Street.  Dan Malloy.

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