Looking for cradle-to-grave service? You’re in the right place. At least, you would have been in the early 1930s, when 36 Pearl Street was the home simultaneously to a modest lying-in hospital run by Mary Louise (Enos) Fish (±1873-1953), and to Joseph C. Nunes, funeral director, who offered $125 funerals, complete with a LaSalle sedan and a “lady assistant.” No. 36 was also the home, through the late 1940s, of Mary Fish’s sister, Elizabeth (Enos) Rose (d 1948), and Elizabeth’s husband, John Anthony Rose (±1868-1947), a retired fisherman and towboat crewman from Boston.
In 1962, the Enos family sold the property to the artist Irving Paderewski and his wife, Mariom Paderewski. Provincetown’s volunteer firefighters made their way through a trap door at the house in December 1965 to save Paderewski’s paintings from being consumed in a blaze that greatly damaged the structure. Their son, Coren Paderewski (1955-2012), later said that the house been transformed by his father into an arts-and-crafts environment in the truest sense. (“Coren Paderewski, 56, of Provincetown,” The Provincetown Banner/Wicked Local, 12 April 2012.)
• Historic District Survey, main house • Historic District Survey, shed • Assessor’s Online Database ¶ Posted 2013-06-16
I once met Mr. Nunes at Cookie’s Tap. He told me that his motto was: “Over the dunes with Nunes, back in the hearse with Pierce” (pronounced “purse”).
Now that was viral marketing, Mary-Jo. Thanks!