Garages and Parking Lots

As soon as cars became common, in the 1920s, when many people owned one and could travel, the demand for seasonal parking in Woods Hole became the overwhelming problem it still is today. People wanted to leave their cars in Woods Hole and travel to the Vineyard and Nantucket or New Bedford on the ferry.

On the site of present-day Redfield Building below School Street were a few homes and businesses. In 1948 the owners of several of the houses along the block below School Street sold the houses to Wilbur Dyer, a coal supplier who had already been parking cars on the coaling dock across the street. Oscar and Martha Hilton bought another section of the block below School Street. Some houses were moved and others demolished. The entire block became a parking lot. This was in use until 1961 when ground was broken for WHOI’s Redfield building, housing the biology and chemistry departments.

Dyer’s lot still remains as a parking lot, owned by WHOI for employee parking, but it does not use the dock area. The Methodist Church building which had been on that site was also moved around the corner to School Street.