† CCNS Wood End | Wood End Station

 

Almost dead ahead from the breakwater once stood the Wood End Life-Saving Station of 1896. This “Duluth”-style structure was similar to the Old Harbor station from Chatham that’s now at Race Point. Perhaps the best known commander at Wood End was Capt. George H. Bickers (b 1858), who joined the Life-Saving Service at 33 after a career of coasting and whaling. In The Life Savers of Cape Cod, Bickers was credited with having ensured that numerous wrecks off Wood End occurred without fatalities. (Bickers is pictured here in a painting by Alice C. Bevin.) After his time, Wood End was witness to the most awfully protracted maritime disaster off Provincetown in the 20th century: the sinking of the submarine U.S.S. S-4 on Dec. 17, 1927. The station was demolished by the federal government in 1961.

† 2 Commercial Street

 
Castle Dune

Commanding a view as far as Wellfleet, the Louis Hollingsworth home was known as the Castle or Castle Dune; also as Pilgrims’ Landing (still visible on the gateposts). It was next owned by George Paine. Anton von Dereck had an art metal studio here. In 1936, the property was bought by Dr. Carl Murchison, a well-known psychologist at Clark University. He and his wife, Dorothea, collected works by artists connected with the town. Ross Moffett estimated there were 250 paintings and 150 prints and other works. Almost all were lost in 1956, when the house burned down. The Murchisons, vowing to rebuild, created Provincetown’s most distinctive work of mid-century modernism.

† 55 Commercial Street

Western Cold Storage

On what is now a parking lot and town landing at 55 Commercial Street stood Western Cold Storage, the westernmost of Provincetown’s cold storage facilities; enormous, industrial-strength fish processing and freezing plants which once lined the waterfront. Only one, the Ice House, survives. The Western was built in 1917 and only operated for a year before shutting down. The town seized the property for non-payment of taxes and tore down the building in 1937, leaving a parking lot in its wake that has been there ever since. The Long Point exhibit at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum indicates that a floater house also occupied this site.

† 63 Commercial Street

 
The Viewpoint

According to Steve Silberman, whose family vacationed here for 40 years, “The original guest house bore the name the Galley, and then the Viewpoint, and was owned by the cookbook author Hazel Meyer and her partner Alice Bartoli, and then by Donald and Joan Morse, before being bought and torn down by the current owners.” In the 1950s, the Galley Shop was operated at this address by “Cap’ns” Dick Knudson and Jim Flag.

† Wharf at 99-101 Commercial Street

 
Union Wharf
The 1,000-foot-long Union Wharf, constructed in about 1830-31, was one of the largest and most important wharves in town. A marine railway at the end drew vessels up to a building with a large notch in its gabled roof to accommodate bowsprits, so that the hull could be brought that much higher and closer.

† 220 Commercial Street

 
Oldest Shop

The Oldest Shop, which was torn down in 1966, can be thought of as Provincetown’s Penn Station; not in terms of grandeur, certainly, but as that beloved landmark everyone assumed would always be around — until it was razed in the name of economics. Noting the objections that greeted its demolition, The Advocate said in an editorial: “The group of protesting citizens could well form the nucleus of an historical society or of any organization dedicated to the preservation of old historic Provincetown landmarks. And there are still more than a few to be saved though they are fast disappearing. Let’s preserve — not memorialize!”

† 266 Commercial Street

This was torn down in 1921 to accommodate the widening of Ryder Street. Perhaps this was where Nick Melitopolous operated the fruit, candy and ice cream stand at which Michael “Mike” Janoplis Sr. — founding proprietor of the Mayflower Café — first worked when he came to Provincetown.

† 270 Commercial Street

This was torn down to accommodate the widening of Ryder Street.

† Hollyhock Lane

 
Between 271 and 273 Commercial Street is the narrow path that was once known as Hollyhock Lane.

† 300 Commercial Street

 
One of the best-known photographs of a town in thrall to the fishery was this view, taken around 1880, showing a handsome home surrounded by fish-drying racks known as flakes. I believe this house stood on the lot of what is now the Mayflower Café, based on its description by Althea Boxell as Elisha Tilson’s house, located up Small’s Court and behind Lewis’s New York Store.

† 310 Commercial Street

Blue Moon Restaurant

After the discontinuation of freight service to Railraod Wharf, the right-of-way south of the passenger depot and railyard was no longer needed. On the north side of Commercial Street, the Janoplis family — of Mayflower Café renown — constructed the Blue Moon Restaurant in 1930. Victor M. Lewis, proprietor of Lewis’ New York Store next door, acquired the underlying property on the west side of Standish Street in 1939. He and Samuel Janoplis were unable to come to any agreement and Janoplis tore this building down.

† 317 Commercial Street

Mayflower Gift Shop

In continuous operation for 75 years at the time of its closing in 1965, the Mayflower Gift Shop was perhaps the longest-lived gift shop in Provincetown history. The shop was opened in 1890 by Irving L. Rosenthal, whose father, Sgt. John Rosenthal, had been in charge of the Long Point Batteries (better known to posterity as Forts Useless and Ridiculous). Irving’s son John F. “Jack” Rosenthal took over the shop. In 1938, the younger Rosenthal modernized the front of the building and rehabilitated it a second time after World War II. During the war, he headed the Provincetown Civilian Defense program. On 15 June 1942, Rosenthal supervised the reception and care for 42 survivors from vessels that had been torpedoed off the coast.

† 323½ Commercial Street

 
Rumpus Room

One of the liveliest nightspots stood until about 30 years ago between the Old Colony Tap and the beach. This large building, known as 323½ or 323R, was reached from a narrow alleyway. In the 1930s, it was the White Whale and Mooring Mast nightclub, run by Frances Bell. It may also have been Maline Costa’s first bar and short-order restaurant, the Shed, before he opened the Moors. In the early 1940s it was the Cape End Club. In May 1945, it reopened as Frank DeMello’s Pilgrim Club, with dining, drinking and dancing to the sounds — over the years — of Sam Robinson’s Harlem Boys, the Duke Boyce Trio and the King Levister Quartet. On the inset photo, you can make out the “Pilgrim Club” sign stretching over the entrance to the alleyway between the Old Colony and Lobster Pot.

† 329 Commercial Street

 
Former Long Point School House | Former Post Office | Arnold’s Radio and Cycle Shop

During the Long Point diaspora of the mid-19th century, the settlement’s most prominent public buildings — the school house and post office — are both reputed to have made the voyage across the harbor. The post office wound up at 256 Bradford Street, the school house at 329 Commercial Street, where it remained until a disastrous fire in 1949, serving in its latter years as the home of the appliance and bicycle shop of Arnold F. Dwyer (±1918-1998), which is still in business, though on a far more modest scale.

† 333R Commercial Street

Provincetown Boat Works

The most common route to demolition in Provincetown’s historic district seems to follow these lines: applicant obtains permission to rehabilitate old building, applicant discovers that old building is too structurally compromised to save, applicant tears down old building. The case of the Provincetown Boat Works, a three-story waterfront building from the 1970s, took its cues from that increasingly familiar scenario.

† 336 Commercial Street

 
Pilgrim House

The Pilgrim House did not accommodate the first visitors, for whom it was named. But it did open for business around 1810 and counted Henry David Thoreau among its guests. (Not an especially satisfied guest, as a page from his 1857 journal makes amusingly clear.) The original structure, set so far back from the street that there was room for a gazebo or bandstand in its front yard, might have dated to the late 1700s. Though much transformed, it managed to last until October 1990, when it was destroyed in a four-alarm blaze that required more than 100 firefighters from seven Cape towns to extinguish and injured more than a dozen people.

† 337 Commercial Street

 
J. D. Hilliard Company

The headhouse of Hilliard’s Wharf housed a ship chandlery and was the headquarters for a fleet of Grand Bankers and whalers, including (presumably) the Emily Hilliard of 1866. It was replaced by Lands End Marine Supply.

† 337R Commercial Street

McGuire’s Sail Loft

James A. “Mack” (or “Jimmie”) McGuire (1873-1960), was the last sail maker in Provincetown. The Rose Dorothea was among the many vessels for which he’d made a full suit of sails by hand: 240,000 stitches over 1,600 yards of canvas. From a personal perspective, I’m astonished to think that McGuire was still in business within my lifetime, though just barely; 1952 was the end of his career. That was the year Joseph E. Macara replaced the sail loft, which he owned, with the marine supply annex to Lands End. (The photograph shows the sail loft in relation to the front building of Lands End.)

† 351C Commercial Street

 
Blanche Lazzell Cottage

It’s been a full decade now, but it’s still hard to think that a building of such historic significance — the longtime waterfront studio of Blanche Lazzell (1878-1956), one of the most significant artists of Provincetown, which was depicted on the cover of 1989 monograph Blanche Lazzell — could have slipped under the radar and on to the rubble pile in 2002.

† 359R Commercial Street

 
Dutras’ fueling station

On the site where Nicholas and Ray Wells would build the Mews in 1962, the Dutra family ran a waterfront fueling station for many years. Their vessels included the Millie, shown above, and the Elsie Howard. You can see the big bright Texaco star on the landside shed, though Millie is in Mobiloil livery. Leno Perry Dutra (d 1954), ran the business, succeeding his father, Joseph P. Dutra.

† 362 Commercial Street

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.

† 409 Commercial Street

 
E. I. Livingston Fountain Service | Jo’s Soda Shop

“One always stops at Lizzie’s on the way home from the movies!” Althea Boxell didn’t often interject such enthusiastic commentary in her remarkable scrapbooks, so we might take this emphatic notation in Book 1 as a sure sign of the popularity of E. I. Livingston Fountain Service, run by one Elizabeth Isabel “Lizzie” Livingston (±1879-1945) of 217 Bradford Street. In 1959, as Jo’s Soda Shop, the establishment played a small role in the great drama of a 45-foot beached fin whale, a story so memorable it was retold 15 years later by Jim Young in When the Whale Came to My Town.

† 454-456 Commercial Street

Solomon’s Temple

A modest home with a grand name, Solomon’s Temple commemorated its occupancy by Capt. Solomon Bangs (1821-1905), a weir fisherman, and his enterprising wife, Rosilla Bangs (1823-1908), the founder of Bangsville, a tent and cottage colony in the area now known as Mayflower Heights [?]. “Uncle Solomon’s home was a three-story structure with a large front yard,” Josephine Patterson recalled in 1942, “not landscaped with a lawn and flowers, but gleaming white with an expanse of fish flakes, upon which was spread to dry the fish he had salted when he returned from his fishing traps.” Rosilla Bangs introduced herself to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907, when the chief executive came to town to lay the cornerstone of the Pilgrim Monument.

† Wharf at 473 Commercial Street

Charley Austin Cook Wharf

Grand Bankers, as the boats that fished the waters off Newfoundland were known, would unload at this 400-foot-long pier.

† 497 Commercial Street

 
Brown’s Bathing Beach

“By the freezer, by the freezer, by the beautiful freezer. You and me, sir; you and me, sir; oh, how happy we’ll be, sir.” These aren’t real lyrics but they certainly would have applied to Brown’s Bathing Beach, a popular East End recreation spot around the turn of the 20th century. Unless one remembers that the waterfront was first and foremost an industrial precinct, it may be hard to understand why people would have gone bathing just a few wards from the Consolidated Weir Company’s enormous cold storage plant — as if they had anywhere to go that wasn’t cheek-by-jowl with some freezer plant or active wharf.

† 531 Commercial Street

This ordinary house in the Historic District stirred up an extraordinary amount of recrimination in 2006 when it was torn down by its new owners, Richard L. Bready, chairman and chief executive of Nortek Inc., and his wife, Cheryl. The drama followed a predictable arc: the Breadys were permitted to “replace the wood shingle roofing, flashing and exterior trim; and add new windows and doors, wood siding and deck.” (Pru Sowers, “Historic House Razed,” The Banner, 11 January 2007.)

† Wharf at 537-539 Commercial Street

 
Whorf’s Wharf

There was never a better-named pier in Provincetown. Indeed, there may never have been a better-named pier anywhere in these United States than Whorf’s Wharf. Originally constructed in 1850 and then expanded, the wharf reached roughly 400 feet into the harbor, almost directly from the spot now occupied by Fanizzi’s restaurant. It also reached into the Provincetown skyline, thanks to a towering windpump on the property, shown in a photograph below.

† 542 Commercial Street

 
Mayo Cottage

Provincetown’s first guest house, with Provincetown’s first swimming pool, was also Provincetown’s Pennsylvania Station: the beloved landmark that no one believed could be torn down for an inappropriate and overscaled development — until it happened. In fact, it happened at about the same time that preservationists were rallying fruitlessly in New York to save Penn Station, in the early 1960s. And it had something of the same result of spurring civic resolve against further fiascoes.

† 544 Commercial Street

Kendall Cottage

Constructed for Jesse I. Kendall, this East End cottage was later acquired by the abutting Vernon Inn, at 542 Commercial, for use as an annex to the main house. These buildings were demolished in the 1960s to make way for the second phase of development of the Surfside Arms and Motor Inn, 543 Commercial. The lot is bordered on the east by Kendall Lane.

† 837 Commercial Street

Preston Camps

A cottage colony that existed at least as early as the 1930s. For a period, it was run by Mary Alexander Campbell and her niece, Dorothy “Dot” (Alexander) Paulman (±1917-2000). The property was purchased in 1955 by Joseph B. McCabe and Cathryn (O’Neil) McCabe, who replaced it six years later with the Tides Motor Inn. [Updated 2012-08-30]

† 837 Commercial Street

 
The Tides

Built in 1961 by Joseph B. McCabe and Cathryn (O’Neil) McCabe on the site of the Prescott Cottages, which they had owned and operated since 1955, the Tides is sometimes described as the first beachfront motel on Beach Point. In its earlier days, when it was known simply as the Tides, the motel was affiliated with the Quality Courts United chain, the corporate predecessor to the Choice Hotels giant of today. It was then called the Tides Motor Inn. Finally, as an affiliate of Best Western, it was known as the Best Western Tides Beachfront. Until the early 2000s, the Tides was the eastern bookend of the company’s Provincetown presence, with the Best Western Chateau in the West End, at 105 Bradford Street Extension.

±913 Commercial Street

Priscilla’s Restaurant and Snack Bar | Mayflower Heights Club

Capt. Warren Crawley, skipper of the trapboat Harbor Bar II, and his wife, Priscilla Crawley, operated Priscilla’s Restaurant and Snack Bar on the town line in the 1950s. David L. Mayo recalled Mrs. Crawley in this delightful anecdote he shared with me in 2012: “Our handyman at East Harbor Cottages, Tech Slade, used to bring me here for lunch as a treat now and again. Priscilla was quite a large woman who always wore a huge housedress and had interesting warts on her face. She always shocked me when passing me with my dessert ice cream cone, licking the perimeter carefully before handing it to me. Tech never reported that activity to my mother.”

† 32 Conwell Street

 
A&P

To this day, you may occasionally hear an old-timer refer to the supermarket on Shank Painter Road as the “A&P.” It’s a habit that dies hard because the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company stores were interwoven with Provincetown life in the 20th century, as they were in towns across America. This particular A&P was Provincetown’s first true supermarket when it opened in 1958. The new development on the site, shown superimposed on the plan below, recalls the past in its name: Old Ann Page Way. That was a famous A&P house brand in the day.

† 26 Court Street

 
Old Shirt Factory

Not for William F. Halsall (1841-1919) would any chicken-coop garret suffice as a painting studio. No; Halsall, an English marine painter of the old school, needed the space to create vast canvases, the equivalent of Cinemascope in their day. And so he set up shop around 1899 in what had been a short-lived shirt factory. He was the first of several important artists to work here, followed by Ross E. Moffett (1888-1971), Charles Anton Kaeselau (1889-1972) and — perhaps most importantly because he is the most undeservedly overlooked, Niles Spencer (1893-1952) — a precisionist and modernist whose work is an appealing mix of Charles Sheeler and Stuart Davis. In addition, the old shirt factory was the home in the 1930s of the Artists’ Lithograph Printing Studio.

† 12 Cudworth Street

Grey Schoolhouse

The plaque says the one-room public school that once stood on this site was constructed in 1828, but the Provincetown Historical Association’s Walking Tour No. 1 puts the date much earlier, in 1795. The guide said that public education was financed from leasing the fishery. Before the Grey Schoolhouse and two others were built, classes were held in meeting houses. School masters would board in pupils’ homes. ¶ Posted 2012-12-11

† 15 Franklin Street

 

Known even in the early 1940s as one of the oldest houses in Provincetown, 15 Franklin Street — shown above in a photo by Ross Moffett — was in the hands of the Brown family for 85 years, from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

† 2 Gosnold Street

 
Provincetown Playhouse on the Wharf

In local theatrical history, the Provincetown Playhouse was a landmark second in importance only to Lewis Wharf, 571 Commercial Street, where Eugene O’Neill’s Bound East for Cardiff was first performed in 1916. (How important? Enough to draw the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, to a performance of Mrs. Warren’s Profession in August 1961.) But in true Provincetown fashion, the structure had more than one use and more than one distinction. As a maritime landmark, it served as the shop in which the surf-cleaving boats of the United States Life Saving Service were perfected, sparing the lives of untold numbers of coast guardsmen, who were as much in peril at a shipwreck as the crew members and passengers they were trying to rescue.

 

† 8 Gosnold Street

 
Bradford Inn

Best known for his stewardship of the Flagship Restaurant, Manuel Francis “Pat” Patrick (d 1964) also managed the Bradford Inn from 1929 to 1937. The three-story building had been a hotel since the 1860s and was once known as the Monument House, run by Harry Clark. (The uphill road to the Pilgrim Monument began just outside.)

† 1 High Pole Hill Road

 
First Town Hall

Elevated high above the little village it served, the Town Hall of 1854 was clad in the very architecture of democracy — Greek Revival — though in its nobility, it could just as easily have been mistaken for a house of worship. With a pinnacle that could be seen far out to sea and a tower clock available for the citizenry to consult, Town Hall also served as a utilitarian landmark. What a splendid symbol of municipal government! And what a dumb idea for a public building: constructed of hard pine and situated well out of reach of any fire apparatus. You know what happens next, and on 16 February 1877, it did. Town Hall burned down, taking with it many of the records that would have made historical research so much more fruitful. Having paid $350 for High Pole Hill, the town was not about to walk away from its investment, though it would take another 30 years for the proper replacement to be found. ¶ Posted 2013-01-25

† 36 Ice House Road

 
Adams’s Ice House

When you reach the end of Race Road, keep going. You’ll be on Ice House Road, a picturesque and rural pathway headed toward Shank Painter Pond, one of the harvesting sites for the natural ice industry, which flourished — weather permitting — from the later 1800s to the early decades of the 20th century. At the end of Ice House Road, you’ll come to a three-acre shoreline tract that belongs to the Provincetown Conservation Trust. From here on, it’s a matter of serendipity, but with any luck, you’ll be able to spot at least one of the foundation walls for the enormous ice house that was maintained by John Darrow Adams (±1895-1958) and depicted by the great Provincetown painter, Ross Moffett.

† 16 Jerome Smith Road

 
Temporary Town Hall (2008-2010)

This was the seat of municipal government when Town Hall underwent its cellar-to-rooftop renovation. Or rather, these were the seats of municipal government, since the arrangement involved five trailers joined together in the Jerome Smith parking lot, opposite the Provincetown Skate Park. Roughly 40 town employees began reporting here for work in November 2008. The inside was no less Spartan. Quarters were almost ship-like in their compact economy. But somehow, the republic survived. ¶ Posted 2013-02-13

† 3 King’s Way

 
No matter what the guide books say about 72 Commercial Street, the question has never been fully settled as to what house is the oldest in Provincetown. Several claimants, however, have disappeared in recent decades, including 3 King’s Way.

† 1 MacMillan Wharf

 
Railroad Wharf (Town Wharf)

“Does this train stop at Provincetown?” So the apocryphal story began about an exchange between passenger and conductor on the Old Colony Railroad. “Well, lady,” the conductor answered, “if it doesn’t, there’s going to be an awful splash!” That was because the trackage of the Old Colony ended about 1,200 feet into the harbor, on Railroad Wharf. Passengers actually never got that far. (The depot was at 132 Bradford Street.) The terminal spur was intended as a means for fishermen to get their product to market with as little delay and exposure as possible; right from the boat up to the train carriage. The postcard above, clearly a pastiche, gets something fundamentally wrong. One track branched into two as it ran out to the end of the wharf; two tracks did not merge into one.

 

† 27 Miller Hill Road

 
Round Barn (Hawthorne School of Art)

The Round Barn was among the several distinctive — “zany” might actually be a better adjective — out buildings scattered around the campus of the Hawthorne School of Art. The school was opened in 1994 at 25 Miller Hill Road, to which this lot was once joined, by the Pop artist Peter Gee (1932-2005) and his wife, Olga Opsahl-Gee (b 1945). She is seen at right adjusting one of the outdoor sculptures in 2008, the last year of the school’s existence. The structure itself was not a Provincetown native but was reportedly trucked here from New York State, where it had been built in the mid-19th century as an apple barn.

† 10 Montello Street

 
Among the several houses with an “Oldest” claim older than the “Oldest House” (72 Commercial Street), there once stood an especially picturesque half Cape on Montello Street. Althea Boxell (1910-1988), that obsessive chronicler of Provincetown, refers to it at least three times in her Scrapbooks: Book 1, Page 5; Book 1, Page 68; and Book 2, Page 133. I don’t know that this house stood at No. 10 — and Boxell doesn’t say — but I have a reason for guessing that it may have.

† 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.”

† 19 Off Conwell Street

One day, “Colonel Corn” set out from his little estate off the State Road to make a trip downtown. He must have dozed off, because the old nag was proceeding slowly but heedlessly down Arch Street — until Officer Veara shouted out to the Colonel that he was going the wrong way on a one-way street. “Tell it to the horse,” Colonel Corn said, by way of reply. “He can’t read.”

You can’t make this stuff up and, happily, because this is Provincetown, you don’t have to.

† 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).

 

† 89 Race Point Road

 
Provincetown Light and Power Company Power Plant

Out at the boundary between town and dune, a pumping station was constructed in the late 19th or early 20th century. The stack was a landmark in its own right.

† 35-57 Shank Painter Road

 
Shankpainter Zoo

It’s hard to believe that it simply vanished without a trace: a zoo that was operating near the center of town only 40 years ago, headed by a man who would go on to direct zoos in Syracuse and New Bedford. But I have yet to discern any physical evidence of the Shankpainter Zoo (though some vestiges might be here), nor have I ever seen any photos (though they surely must exist).