15 Tremont Street, by David W. Dunlap.
15 Tremont Street, by David W. Dunlap.
In The Provincetown Book, Nancy W. Paine Smith created the historical outline to which subsequent accounts, including mine, are indebted; a grab-bag of narrative, anecdote, and detailed data. She and the photographer William “Billy May” Smith lived in this Gothic Revival-style house, with board-and-batten siding, which her father, Joshua Paine, built in 1850. (Her brother Joshua built the Provincetown Inn.) She grew up here, returned here after attending the Tufts Divinity School and serving as an ordained minister, and died here in 1940. The property, including the stable and carriage house, passed to her niece, Dorothy (Paine) Collier. It left Paine family hands in 1958 when Albert and Helen Smith bought it. The house is now owned by their daughter, Marie Allene Smith Thibeault, and her family. Her daughter Nancy Marie Thibeault helped manage the Joshua Paine Guest House and Carriage House until her death in 2014.
More than 2,000 buildings and vessels are searchable on buildingprovincetown.com. The Building Provincetown book is available for purchase ($20) at Town Hall, Office of the Town Clerk, 260 Commercial Street, Provincetown 02657.
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