This Atlantic Coast Main Street Feels Like A Movie Set

Twice in the 1970s, Edgartown's Main Street on Martha's Vineyard was dressed up as Amity, the beach town in Jaws, and much of what Steven Spielberg filmed there is standing today. In 1974 he shot Quint's nails-on-the-chalkboard town meeting inside Edgartown Town Hall, which is still the town hall, and the brick storefront at 55 Main Street that played the town's hardware store now houses a restaurant. When the Jaws 2 crew came back in the fall of 1977, they repainted real shop signs with Amity names and hired fifty extras to fill the sidewalks.

Wood-sided houses and shops line the blocks around those buildings, and since 1987 exterior changes visible from the street, apart from paint color, have needed approval from the town's historic district commission, so Main Street today looks a lot like Amity did on screen.

Amity's Downtown Is on Edgartown's Main Street

Edgartown's Main Street became Amity's downtown in the middle of May 1974, chosen by the film's production designer, Joe Alves, who found the tidy harbor town the perfect Amity. That put the film's best-known town scenes within a few blocks of each other. Quint dragged his fingernails down a blackboard inside Edgartown Town Hall, on Main Street, during the meeting where he offers to catch the shark for $10,000.

Downtown Amity's Fourth of July crowds were filmed a short walk away, near the corner of Main and North Water Streets, and the brick building at 55 Main Street, now The Port Hunter restaurant, was the hardware store where Brody picks up supplies for his beach-closed signs. The building used as the Amity Police Department is on South Water Street. The Amity National Bank sign made for the film hangs on display inside the Rockland Trust bank in town.

The Old Whaling Church Seats 470 Behind Shipwright-Built Columns

Shipwrights raised the six Doric columns across the front of the Old Whaling Church at 89 Main Street in 1843. The Vineyard Trust has owned the Greek Revival building since 1980, and concerts and community events are held in its 470-seat hall throughout the year, so a concert ticket gets you inside.

The Trust's 75-minute walking tour, offered privately by appointment, starts at the Carnegie Heritage Center on North Water Street and goes inside the Dr. Daniel Fisher House and the Vincent House before ending at the church. The Fisher House, at 99 Main Street, has a formal garden of roses and pear trees around a small domed summer house, and the Vincent House, built in 1672, is the oldest surviving house on Martha's Vineyard.

Downtown Edgartown lies within the town's historic district, where exterior changes visible from a public way have needed a Certificate of Appropriateness since 1987. Under the town's guidelines, wood clapboards and shingles are preferred and vinyl, aluminum, and plastic siding are listed as inappropriate, so new siding downtown is expected to be wood.

A $5 Ferry Ride Puts You Where Brody and the Mayor Argued

Five dollars buys a walk-on round trip on the Chappaquiddick ferry, the On Time, the ferry where Brody and Mayor Vaughn have their tense exchange about the beaches in Jaws. The crossing covers a 527-foot channel in a minute or two, with room for up to three cars on deck, and a bike and rider go for $8 round trip while a car and driver pay $17, cash or island check only. In summer the boats keep running until midnight, a schedule that starts the Thursday before Memorial Day and lasts through the island's fishing derby in mid-October.

Edgartown Harbor Light sits on the beach at the end of North Water Street, past the Harbor View Hotel, facing Chappaquiddick across the harbor, and the 44-foot cast-iron tower can be reached on foot across the sand. More than 1,100 engraved stones around its base make up the Children's Memorial. The tower is closed until spring 2027, and once it reopens, admission is $5 for adults and free for kids 12 and under.

Authors Sign Books on a Main Street Porch All Summer

Edgartown Books, at 44 Main Street, came close to closing before the Sudikoff family bought it in 2012 to keep it going. The shop is open year-round, and all summer its author signings are held out on the front porch on Main Street. A short walk away on Mayhew Lane, Among the Flowers has been family-owned for more than four decades and is a good breakfast stop, while the Edgartown Diner is decorated in a 1950s theme. For dinner, Detente has been run by Kevin and Suzanna Crowell in Nevin Square since 2005, and ice cream comes from Mad Martha's.

Main Street Gets Two Parades a Year

The corner where Amity's Fourth of July crowds were filmed sits on the route of Edgartown's real Fourth of July parade, which steps off from the Edgartown School at 5 p.m. and winds through downtown, down North Water Street and back up Main Street. Car traffic on the Chappy ferry is halted at 4:15 p.m. that afternoon, and after sunset the fireworks go up from a barge moored north of the lighthouse.

Christmas in Edgartown is held on the same blocks in mid-December. The lighthouse is lit on Friday evening as the town's version of a tree lighting, and on Saturday at 11 a.m. the Santa parade comes down Main Street with floats and fire engines. That weekend the Minnesingers sing in the Old Whaling Church.

The Bus Into Town Crosses the Jaws Bridge

Steamship Authority ferries from Woods Hole reach Vineyard Haven in 45 minutes for $11 each way per adult in 2026, and VTA Route 13 continues to Edgartown along Beach Road. The bus follows Joseph A. Sylvia State Beach, the 2.2-mile barrier beach where the Kintner attack and the Fourth of July panic were filmed. It then crosses the American Legion Memorial Bridge, which fans call the Jaws Bridge, where signs now prohibit the jumping the bridge became known for.

The seasonal Falmouth Edgartown Ferry is the only mainland ferry that sails straight into Edgartown Harbor, a 75-minute crossing for passengers only. Bringing a small car on the Steamship Authority runs $127 or more each way in summer, and drivers can leave it at the Park and Ride lot and take Route 11, a free summer shuttle that stops on Mayhew Lane, a short walk from Main Street.

Amity Still Stands Within a Short Walk of the Ferry Slip

Jaws spread Amity across Martha's Vineyard, with Brody's house on East Chop Drive and Quint's shack, since torn down, in Menemsha. Edgartown holds the biggest cluster of what is left that a visitor can stand in front of, and that cluster sits within a short walk of the Chappy ferry slip on Dock Street. In the fall of 1977 the Jaws 2 crew repainted shop signs along these same blocks with Amity names, so the downtown storefronts a visitor passes today were Amity in two films. The easiest day to see the street the way the cameras did is the Fourth of July, when the town's parade comes back up Main Street from North Water Street and the sidewalks fill with a holiday crowd at the same corner where Spielberg filmed Amity's in 1974.