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 on the right was taken where Inman Street meets Beech Street. The others are behind Prospect Street.
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