Tisbury fire fighters quickly extinguished a fire at 54 Main Street in Tisbury Sunday night, at the back of the building housing galleries owned by Louisa Gould and Peter and Ronni Simon.

The fire started in a trash can for recyclables behind the building around 8 pm, Ms. Gould said in a phone call Tuesday. She and her husband J. B. Lamont had stopped by her gallery to pick something up and he smelled smoke. Ms. Gould ran out front and saw smoke billowing from behind and between the buildings at 54 and 56 Main Street.

By that time, Fred Natusch and Jennifer Oliver, owners of Imagine gift shop off Union Street, had reported the fire.

Tisbury police officer Kelly Kershaw responded to the scene first. She said flames from the trash can had spread to the wall of the building. An unidentified man had grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it at the siding to keep the fire from spreading further in the few minutes before the Tisbury fire department arrived, she said. Tisbury Police Sgt. Robert Fiske also responded.

Officer Kershaw said it was fortunate the fire was extinguished quickly, because a heating-oil tank was close by. No one was injured. The cause of the fire is under investigation, she added.

In a phone call Monday with building owner Larry Levine in Las Vegas, he said as soon as he was notified about the fire, he contacted carpenter Shane Sebastian of Joppa Breeze General Contractors, and Paul Cotton, a former building projects manager who is familiar with the sprinkler system. Mr. Levine asked them both to go to the building and check out the fire.

Mr. Simon said other than a slight smell of smoke, there was no discernible damage to the Simon Gallery and Louisa Gould Gallery interiors.

“Both Louisa and I were spared, but we all feel vulnerable,” Mr. Simon said.

Sunday’s fire is the third incident to cause damage in the building in three years. A few weeks after Ms. Gould opened her gallery in June 2007, a fire in an upstairs apartment triggered the automatic sprinkler system and flooded her space. On January 2, 2009, a pipe in a fire suppression sprinkler system burst, flooding both her gallery and the Simon Gallery.

Tisbury Fire Chief John Schilling was out of town Monday and unavailable for comment.