The Hood Milk Bottle was built in Taunton in 1934 by ice cream maker Arthur Gagner. The 40-foot-tall wooden structure stood beside Route 44 and operated as a roadside ice cream stand. Its bottle-shaped design belongs to the Coney Island style of roadside architecture, where the building itself served as the advertisement.
The bottle measures 18 feet across, weighs roughly 15,000 pounds, and would hold 58,620 gallons of milk if someone made a series of terrible decisions. Gagner sold the business to the Sankey family in 1943. The stand eventually closed and sat abandoned from 1967 until H.P. Hood purchased it and donated it to Boston Children’s Museum.
Hood moved the bottle from Taunton to Boston by barge during the “Great Bottle Sail” in 1977. It was restored and moved slightly during the museum’s 2006 expansion, then rededicated in 2007. Another restoration was completed in 2021. Nearly a century after Gagner built it, the giant bottle still operates as an ice cream and concession stand, which is a better outcome than most buildings shaped like food receive.
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