Boston’s Hood Bottle | Up Close
Even in a city full of famous landmarks to see, it’s impossible to pass up this quirky Boston icon.
By Joe Bills|Jan 03 2022|
Coffee By Design | Portland, Maine
Photo Credit : Katherine KeenanPhoto Credit : Edward Westmacott/Alamy Stock Photo
If you’ve ever wondered what a 58,620-gallon bottle of milk looks like—and who hasn’t?—the answer can be found just outside the Boston Children’s Museum, on Fort Point Channel. There stands a 40-foot-tall milk bottle sporting the logo of Massachusetts’s own H.P. Hood, as it has ever since it was acquired by the museum 45 years ago and became a signature Boston landmark.
In the early 1930s, inspired by the shape of a bottle from a nearby dairy, Arthur Gagner of Taunton, Massachusetts, constructed this wooden building as an eye-catching retail stand for his homemade ice cream. In the coming years, as car ownership boomed, crazy roadside attractions would become more commonplace, but Gagner’s was one of the nation’s first.
In 1943, Gagner sold the bottle to another local ice cream maker, the Sankey family, who ran the stand for the next 24 years. Afterward, the bottle was abandoned and fell into disrepair; its facade grew so weathered it even caught the eye of famed photographer Walker Evans, whose 1974 Polaroid images of it now belong to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Not long after Walker photographed the forlorn structure, though, clothing designer Carol Scofield made it her mission to find it a new home. Turns out, that would be the Children’s Museum, which was about to relocate to its current downtown location.
Hood signed on as a sponsor and funded the restoration, and on April 20, 1977, a barge carried the rebranded bottle across Boston Harbor to its new digs. Several vendors have operated out of the milk bottle since then, but most recently it has returned to its roots as an ice cream stand.
And since you are probably just as curious as I was: It would take roughly 9,300 cows to fill the bottle in a single day, and more than 32 million Oreo cookies could be dunked before all of that milk was absorbed. Just please, don’t ask how I know. —Joe Bills
When I would visit my Aunt Anne in Manchester, New Hampshire in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s Hood milk came in very large milk cartons in the dairy case. i always enjoy the Hood eggnog, it was so delicious this past Christmas tide, thank you to all the workers who brought the Hood product to the grocery stores. Sincerely, George Singletary
I also remember Hood Coronet Ice Crem. Not sure where, but they had a farm on the North Shore.
Re: Coronet ice cream. This was an effort by Hood to bring to the masses a premium product. It was very rich and you bet it tasted good. Coronet was the local sponsor of The Rosemary Clooney Show. The sponsorship only lasted a year I believe. In a funny set of circumstances a year or two later her show was sponsored by Coronet toilet paper if memory serves me right.
The milk bottle at the Boston Children’s Museum was owned by Arthur Gagner and the name on it was Gagner’s Ice Cream. It was located on Winthrop Street in Taunton, MA. When the bottle was re-furnished and set in the cement pad, the new ice cream served that day was Hood’s “Frogurt” – frozen yogurt.
The milk bottle at the Boston Children’s Museum was owned by Arthur Gagner and the name on it was Gagner’s Ice Cream, not Frates Dairy. It was located on Winthrop Street in Taunton, MA. When the bottle was re-furbished and set in the cement pad, the new ice cream served that day was Hood’s “Frogurt” – frozen yogurt. The day the bottle was set was known as “The Great Bottle Sail”.
The Hoods Milk bottle by the Children’s museum in Boston was originally in Taunton Mass. It was owned by Frates Diary. I remember going there for Ice Cream on a Sunday afternoon with my Aunt, my Mother and my siblings. It was bought by Hood Milk who restored it brought it to the Children’s Museum. There is still one of the original bottle In Raynham Mass. It is now a restaurant.
The lady that said the bottle was owned by Frates is mistaken . The one in Raynham is Frates The one in Boston was owned by Arthur Gagner, I know because I’m his granddaughter and have the pictures to prove it!!
How many Hoodsies would it hold?