THEN & NOW: Dempsey Auto Sales in Great Barrington

The building that housed the Gulf gas station shown above still stands, in a different form. It is now Dempsey Auto Sales on Stockbridge Road, at the intersection with Route 183. A gas station first operated on this site in the 1920s, when it was Seward Doty’s filling station. By 1940 it was Arthur Goodell’s filling station and tourist cabins. By the early 1950s, the site was home to George Zecher’s Linden Tree Gulf gas station and tourist cabins. In the circa 1957 photograph shown above, additional advertising signs promote S&H Green Stamps and a “Life of Riley” TV show contest. In the late 1950s and the 1960s, Harry Billings operated an auto repair business here. The Linden Tree tourist cabins (shown in the photograph below) were torn down long ago. The site of those cabins is now CHP Community Health Center and VCA Animal Hospital. Getting back to the early 1950s, this portion of Route 7 was rerouted from what is now the back side of Dempsey Auto Sales south to Barrington Brewery.

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