Tarvers Package Store
Anthony C. Tarvers and his family operated a liquor store in a long, skinny structure at No. 362 from the 1930s at least through the later 1960s. This odd little building also seems to be the one that Althea Boxell had in mind when she described a shop in which the artist Arthur V. Diehl (1870-1929) once worked. In Boxell’s 11th Scrapbook, she notes that Diehl “painted a dollar bill on the floor so real, everyone tried to pick it up.” The building can be seen at the left-hand edge of Diehl’s handsome Provincetown cityscape of 1913, which is centered on the adjoining house at 364 Commercial Street. Helen and Napi Van Dereck own both the Diehl painting and the property, a tax lot encompassing No. 362 and No. 364.
The old Tarvers store was torn down in the 1980s and replaced by the building currently occupied by Essentials. The plan below shows the footprint of the demolished structure in red.
