621 Commercial Street, site of the Provincetown Players’ first performances, by David W. Dunlap (2009).
Anne Packard, by Charles Fields.
“A profoundly therapeutic party-game.” That’s how Robert Károly Sarlós, in Jig Cook and the Provincetown Players, described the plays given here on 15 July 1915. Constancy, by Neith Boyce Hapgood, was done on the porch. Then the audience moved out to the porch and watched Suppressed Desires, by Cook and Susan Glaspell, performed in the parlor. The Provincetown Players were born. Later known as the Bissell Cottage or Bissell Hilton, for Hawthorne Bissell, and the Cast Anchor Guest House, No. 621 was acquired in 1981 by the artist Anne (Locke) Packard. Her monograph, Anne Packard Introspective, was published in 2009. Describing her work to Susan Rand Brown of The Banner, Packard said: “The boats, the old cottages; these are my vehicle. These are not portraits of boats. It’s the sense it gives you. That’s what I try to capture.”
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.
