Stan Lair:

249. "Dukes County Garage -- LeGrand Lockwood Aldrich owner - Later owned by William G. Manter - Now owned by Bob Douglas."

"A large garage operated by Legrand Lockwood Aldrich. The sure is le grand name! It later became Dukes County Garage owned by William G. Manter. Now Mr. Manter had several projects, businesses, going at that location. He had a contracting business, he had a house painting business, along with his garage work and dealership in Buicks and Chevrolets. Walter Ripley was his foreman for a good many years on the contracting end of it. Well this garage, there was a large front storage area. It was made of concrete, with a metal roof. Had a parts department, an electrical department, a car painting department, and a repair department. So it was quite a large operation for that time. They also had a wharf there, called Dukes County Wharf.

[To the East] was mostly a vacant property for a long, long time -until they moved in a large building, it's now a restaurant. This building originally was just in the rear of the Martha's Vineyard National Bank, and was called the Luxemoor Building. It was built by Leander Owen as a leather novelty manufacturing plant, which never did work out too well. I don't think it lasted too long, as I recall. Dukes County Garage used it as offices and showrooms. They had showrooms for Buick and Chevrolet cars. The second floor was leased to the Navy Department during the war years to house Navy personnel. Incidentally we used to play basketball in this building when it was behind the bank in the old location, and we had to shoot the ball over the supporting beams which ran across the building. It wasn't an ideal place to play but we had to play there because there was no gyms in those days. Also on each end, so the spectators wouldn't get hurt, there was chicken wire put up there. I don't know how many people got hurt on that chicken wire, with cut fingers and so forth. But, we used to play there, and enjoy it and had good times."

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