236 Commercial Street

 
Unitarian Universalist Meeting House | Formerly Church of the Redeemer

Simply put, the U.U., which has stood here since 1847, is the most beautiful building in town. Indeed, it’s so revered in popular opinion that its steeple is known as the Christopher Wren Tower, after the 17th-century architect whose elegant churches transformed London. It is the only one of the four surviving 19th century churches on Commercial Street that still serves as a house of worship. It also does double duty as a vital secular hub and performance space, with fine acoustics and a restored 1850 Holbrook tracker organ. Don’t miss a visit to the sanctuary. The entire room was painted in trompe l’oeil style by Carl Wendte of Germany with a goal to fool your eye into believing you’re in Greek Temple.

256-258 Commercial Street

 
Former Congregational Church of the Pilgrims | Former Art Cinema | Saki | John Dough’s | Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop | Red Eye Coffee | Toko Indo

Your first reaction on standing in front of this building may well be: “So where’s the church?” It’s hard to make out, what with all structural additions that have grown by accretion — and like topsy — in what used to be the church’s ample front yard. But if you step across Commercial Street for a slightly better perspective, you’ll quickly recognize the shape and volume of a 19th-century house of worship.

356 Commercial Street

 
Provincetown Public Library

The tower of the Provincetown Public Library is — and always was — a skyline ornament. But it was even more imposing in 1860 when it was built as the Center Methodist Church, with a steeple piercing the sky at 162 feet. The steeple came down after the Portland Gale of 1898, but the church nonetheless inspired Edward Hopper (as discussed by Stephen Borkowski with The New York Times), among other painters. The Methodists sold it in 1958 to Walter P. Chrysler Jr., whose father founded the Chrysler Corporation. He turned it into the Chrysler Art Museum, a fine-art collection now housed in Norfolk, Va. The old church was briefly the Center for the Arts before reopening in 1976 as the Provincetown Heritage Museum, curated by Josephine Del Deo. (Presciently, one of the life-size dioramas in the museum was “The 1873 Library,” whose wax-figure librarian, by Mary Bono, is shown above.) The museum’s astonishing, ship-in-a-bottle centerpiece was a half-scale model of the legendary schooner Rose Dorothea, built by Francis “Flyer” Santos. In 2005, the building began a new life as the Provincetown Public Library, replacing the Freeman building at 330 Commercial Street.

418 Commercial Street

 
Former Church of Christ, Scientist | Packard Gallery

A great circle was closed in 1988 when the artist Anne (Locke) Packard bought 418 Commercial Street as a gallery for her works and those of her daughters, Cynthia and Leslie. Up until 1970, this had been owned by the Christian Science Society, which used it as a church and reading room. As it happened, Packard’s grandfather, the painter Max Bohm, was one of the more prominent Christian Scientists in town, though he did not live long enough to have attended services here.

 

513-519 Commercial Street

 
Church of St. Mary of the Harbor

As heirs to the Church of England, Episcopal congregations are often among the oldest — if not the oldest — in many New England towns. In Provincetown, however, the Episcopal church was among the latest arrivals. Even the Church of Christ, Scientist had a permanent sanctuary here (418 Commercial Street) before the Episcopalians did. But under the Rev. Robert Wood Nicholson, who was called in 1933 to be the first vicar of St. Mary’s and is portrayed here by Jerry Farnsworth, the young church flourished, becoming a small artistic treasure house in the process. (Its nominal street number is 517, but the lot embraces what used to be four discreet properties, from No. 513 to No. 519.)

20 Court Street

 
Former St. Anne’s Convent

The hills may or may not be alive with the sound of music, but 20 Court Street was once a Roman Catholic convent, housing the sisters of the Love of God (Mother Cecilia is pictured at left). This was not so very long ago, beginning in the early 1960s during the pastorate of the Rev. Leo J. Duart at the Church of St. Peter the Apostle, 11 Prince Street. The house was originally constructed around 1850. In the 1950s, it was the home of Frank A. Days Jr. (±1877-1961) and his wife, Anna Aurelia (Swett) Days (±1877-1957). Days had run F. A. Days & Company, founded by his father, who built the lumberyard on Pearl Street that became the nucleus of the Fine Arts Work Center. (Their daughter, born Anna, had been called into religious service as Sister Mary Leander.)

† 1 Mozart Avenue

Old White Oak Meeting House

The “Old White Oak” — built of that wood, harvested from nearby hillsides when one still could harvest lumber at the Cape end — was Provincetown’s second church. It was constructed in 1773 and dedicated on 20 February 1774. At the time, just before the Revolution, the Orthodox Christianity of the Puritans and Pilgrims was the established religion of the colony, and as such, the construction of the meeting house was a municipal endeavor. The call to the Rev. Samuel Parker was made, in fact, at a Town Meeting in December 1773. Parker was promised an annual salary of £67.13s.4d “to settel in sed town, and preach ye gospel to ye inhabitants.”

11 Prince Street

 
Church of St. Peter the Apostle (Campus)

The Unitarian church and the old Methodist church have steeples that pierce the skyline. The Episcopal church is an artistic treasure house. The old Congregational church, full of commercial tenants, sits next to Town Hall. The modern Methodist church can’t be missed on your way to the supermarket. And the old Christian Science church is a gallery owned by a renowned family of artists.

The only church that casual visitors might miss is the Roman Catholic Church of St. Peter the Apostle. That’s a pity, because it was far and away the most important unifying force in the town’s social and spiritual life through much of the 20th century. St. Peter’s was — and in many ways still is — the heart of the Portuguese community. There’s a reason the annual Blessing of the Fleet begins here. The Rev. Leo J. Duart, pictured above, was an ambitious parochial leader, responsible for the construction of a parish hall and a school in the 1950s. Separate entries will cover the old and new churches. This entry concerns St. Peter’s campus generally, before and after a fire in 2005 that destroyed the church pictured in the post card above.

† 11 Prince Street

 
Church of St. Peter the Apostle (1874)

Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. The words of Jesus, taken from the Gospel of Matthew, can be seen clearly in the scroll held by the right hand in the figure of St. Peter at the church that bears his name. “You are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church.” There could be no more fitting a patron for Provincetown than Peter, the fisherman, to whom Jesus gives the keys to the kingdom of heaven, which the figure holds in its left hand. The church building was completed and blessed on 11 October 1874 during the pastorate of the Rev. John J. Maguire (d 1894).

 

11 Prince Street

 
Church of St. Peter the Apostle (2008)

Though the priesthood was a late vocation for the Rev. Henry J. Dahl (b 1941), pictured at left, he found himself involved in the arduous — if ultimately rewarding — challenge of church building within four years of his ordination in 1996. After helping the Rev. Marcel Bouchard construct a new home for Corpus Christi in East Sandwich, Father Dahl might reasonably have expected that he’d had his once-in-a-priest’s-lifetime experience in church development. Perhaps he imagined that his principal task when called to the pastorate of St. Peter’s in 2002 would be the maintenance and conservation of a building at 11 Prince Street that had after all been standing stoutly for 130 years; defying the Portland Gale and the Hurricane of 1938, among other onslaughts.

Provincetown offers nothing if not surprises, however. Only three years into his service on the lower Cape, Father Dahl was confronted — overnight in the dead of winter — with the worst catastrophe to befall the parish. St. Peter’s burned to the ground. And it fell to him to rebuild. Two-and-a-half years later, the deed was done, to designs by Tom Palanza of Mansfield, an architect and a deacon of the church.

 

20 Shank Painter Road

 
Provincetown United Methodist Church

“Is God dead?” was the question posed by Time magazine in 1966. The answer could have been: “If He’s still alive, he sure isn’t paying much attention to the architecture being committed in His name.” The general descent in quality of religious buildings in the West after World War II reflected the trauma their builders had just endured; a conflict that left even the faithful with many doubts. Rather than try to inspire awe or mystery or rapture, post-war houses of worship seemed content to take their cues from stripped-down residential and commercial buildings.

In that context, the Methodist church designed by Donaldson Ray McMullin Associates of Cambridge (that’s one man’s name, not a three-person firm), built from 1958 to 1960, was a remarkable achievement. Its compelling nave, with arresting redwood parquetry and steeply-pitched, exposed roof beams, tends very much to direct one’s eyes and thoughts upward, while exuding warmth and a connection with the natural world and to the craft of boat building.

 

3 Winthrop Street

 
The Methodist parsonage in which Eugene O’Neill was married. Rest of the entry to be written.