Frates Dairy Milk Bottle (G&S Pizza)

New Bedford, Massachusetts, United States

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Buildings and structures

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Current

Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A 52-foot bottle-shaped building at 2840 Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford's North End, built in 1930 as part of Frates Dairy and now home to G&S Pizza. Frates built a similar bottle, which survives in Raynham, Massachusetts.

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Frates Dairy Milk Bottle (G&S Pizza)

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Site-level location · 41.6973° N, 70.9340° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Beside Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford's North End, a pizza shop sits inside a milk bottle 52 feet tall. It began in 1930 as Frates Dairy, a place where, according to local columnist Barry Richard writing in 2023, people went when they had to have ice cream.

WBSM reported in 2023 that the Frates family ran the dairy from 1930 to 2001 and that the ice cream was made on the premises. The New Bedford Guide described the bottle in 2013 as one of three built around 1930 and designed by Les Labrose, and said it was painted to look full of milk with a band of cream at the top. Where the other two stood is not settled. The New Bedford Guide named Boston and Raynham, while the Roadside Architecture site lists Raynham and a third, since demolished, in Norton. The Raynham bottle is also dated differently: Yahoo News said 1925, Roadside Architecture 1926.

Who built the New Bedford bottle is also disputed. WhalingCity.net says the owners built it and steamed and bent the wood in the parking lot. WhalingCity.net's page carries a 2013 email crediting one local carpenter, and a reader quoted by the New Bedford Guide credited another man, each a relative of the person writing. Neither is documented.

The ice cream business changed hands. The New Bedford Guide says a couple bought the building and business in 2003 and renamed it Tali, and that the bottle was for sale by 2005. G&S Pizza then took it over and kept the bottle, in 2005 according to WBSM and a year later according to the New Bedford Guide.

G&S Pizza's website lists dine-in, carry-out and delivery from 2840 Acushnet Avenue (checked October 2026). The bottle can be seen from the street without going in, but the building is a working restaurant.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

The bottle is the front of a working pizzeria. G&S Pizza's website lists dine-in, carry-out and delivery at 2840 Acushnet Avenue (checked October 2026). The New Bedford Guide reported in 2013 that ice cream was served from spring through summer; check before relying on it.

ACCESS

At 2840 Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford's North End. The bottle is visible from the street. G&S Pizza occupies the building as a business; hours are on its website.

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11 km away

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