Provincetown’s Hidden Art: The Fireplaces of Conrad Malicoat

Provincetown is filled with art, but some of its most remarkable pieces aren’t hanging in galleries. They’re built into the town itself. Hidden inside private homes, tucked into restaurants, and even visible from the street are the unmistakable brick creations of Conrad Malicoat, a Provincetown-born sculptor who turned the everyday fireplace into something wonderfully unexpected.

Born in Provincetown in 1936, Conrad grew up surrounded by art. His parents, Philip and Barbara Malicoat, were important members of the town’s artistic community. Philip was a respected painter who had come to Provincetown in 1929 to study, while Barbara worked in printmaking, graphic arts, and crafts. Their home provided Conrad with an early education in creativity, independence, and making things by hand.

Conrad took that inheritance in a decidedly three-dimensional direction. After Provincetown High School, he attended Oberlin College, graduating in 1957, spent time in Paris, and studied at Maine’s Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. There he met artist Anne Lord, whom he married in 1960. Eventually, they made Provincetown their home.

Malicoat worked in stone, wood, metal, and brick, creating sculpture that could be both serious and playful. He was a Fine Arts Work Center Fellow from 1968 to 1970, and four of his sculptures are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. He was also deeply involved in Provincetown life, serving community arts and conservation organizations and volunteering for more than 20 years with the Provincetown Fire Department.

Around town, however, his most immediately recognizable legacy may be his extraordinary masonry.

Malicoat treated brick less like a conventional building material and more like clay for a sculpture. His fireplaces rise, bend, project, and change direction. Bricks appear to push outward from walls or balance at surprising angles. The finished pieces can feel spontaneous, but Malicoat’s mathematical background helped him combine experimentation with structural skill.

Architectural historian David W. Dunlap has documented Malicoat installations in 14 Provincetown homes, along with two celebrated restaurant examples: The Red Inn at 15 Commercial Street and formally Napi’s Restaurant at 7 Freeman Street. At Napi’s, Malicoat created the sculptural brickwork surrounding the passage to the restrooms, believed by his daughter Galen to have been among his earlier experiments with the form.

Other documented locations include 36 Commercial Street, 64 Commercial Street, 438 Commercial Street, 621 Commercial Street, 641 Commercial Street, 649 Commercial Street, 38 Nelson Avenue, and 8 Pearl Street. Because many are private residences, discovering one is often like finding a secret piece of Provincetown art history.

Perhaps the most public example is at 64 Commercial Street, along Atwood Avenue. There, Malicoat took his artistry beyond the interior fireplace. The outside chimney features a brick relief of a breaching whale, visible to people walking along the lane. Inside, he also created distinctive sculptural millwork for the kitchen.

Conrad Malicoat died in 2014, but his work remains embedded—quite literally—in Provincetown. These fireplaces are functional pieces of architecture, yet they are also original sculptures that belong specifically to the rooms and buildings for which they were created.

In a town famous for paintings, galleries, and studios, Malicoat left a different kind of collection behind. His Provincetown masterpieces aren’t framed on walls.

They are the walls.