Provincetown History Snippets: What is The Gropius House?

At 2 Commercial Street you can look up and possibly spot part of the Gropius House, also known as the Murchison House. Commissioned by Dr. Paul Murchison and created largely by Walter Gropius, it was based on a Japanese temple design with minimalist lines and large expanses of glass. In 2008 the property was acquired by Clifford Schorer, who restored the Gropius house and added seven additional houses.

Why Gropius? In Building Provincetown, David Dunlap recounts a correspondence with Schorer, who said, “At a minimum, it is fair to say that the owner/architect contract was signed by Gropius personally and that the design ideas are his interpretation of the owners’. It is, therefore, not a stretch to call this a Gropius house, as this was the same procedure he used on most of his projects, especially after 1955.”

The Gropius house also figures in a 2017 mystery novel set in Provincetown, Death of a Bear.

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