Subscribe to stay up to date with the latest in Provincetown!
Subscribe to ptownie

    Provincetown History Snippet: The Outermost House
    June 7, 2019
    Outermost House
    Note: From time to time we venture farther afield than Provincetown to bring you history snippets. Today we’re going slightly up-Cape to remember Henry Beston in honor of the opening of Outermost Art & Objects in Ptown. American writer and...
    Provincetown History Snippet: The Town Goes Dark
    May 31, 2019
    Provincetown Blackout
    On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and America was at war. While up until then the Pilgrim Monument had been lit with powerful floodlights, the day after the declaration of war, the Monument was no longer the beacon of light it had been...
    Provincetown History Snippet: Forum 49
    May 24, 2019
    Forum 49 Provincetown
    In the late 1940s and 1950s Provincetown emerged as one of the nation’s première art locales for contemporary American art. The first major exhibition of Abstract Expressionists was held at 200 Commercial Street during Forum 49 in the summer of 1949. Forum...
    Provincetown History Snippet: Provincetownsend
    May 17, 2019
    John Waters
    It was said to be a place for “runaways and other gay street youth,” but Prescott Townsend’s home at 1 Bradford Street—known as “Provincetownsend”—provided much more than a place to stay. It was supposedly magical: John Waters claimed that trees...
    Provincetown History Snippet: The Night the Castle Burned
    May 10, 2019
    Murchison Castle
    Carl Murchison and his wife Dorotea bought the west end Provincetown house they called the “Castle” in 1936, and immediately began accumulating a substantial art collection, one that included many early Provincetown painters as well as Gainsboroughs,...
    Provincetown History Snippet: Bunny Hops In
    April 28, 2019
    Edmund Wilson Provincetown
    In 1920, writer and critic Edmund “Bunny” Wilson arrived in Ptown to visit poet Edna St. Vincent Millay in the cottage she rented from Susan Glaispell. He returned in 1927 and described entering the harbor: “exquisite delicacy of mother-of-pearl sea...
    Provincetown History Snippet: The Portuguese
    April 20, 2019
    The Portuguese Provincetown
    While there was some immigration from Portugal in pre-Colonial and Colonial times, it was when whaling took off that it became significant. The Azores were known to captains as the “Western Islands whaling grounds” and the ships hunted, re-provisioned,...
    How Did WOMR Come To Be?
    April 12, 2019
    WOMR Hisory Provincetown
    Happy Birthday, WOMR! Community radio stations are interesting places. They attract original thinkers, iconoclastic figures, free spirits. WOMR was founded by such a group of people, and in celebration of the station’s 37th birthday, we’re bringing you...
    Provincetown History Snippet: Winning the Race
    April 6, 2019
    Rose Dorothea Provincetown
    During Boston’s Old Home Week Celebration in August 1907, a cup was offered by Sir Thomas Lipton for a 42-mile fishermen’s race in Massachusetts Bay—from Provincetown to Gloucester and back—with a purported value of $5,000. Captain Marion...