Provincetown History Snippet: WOMR and the Schoolhouse Center for the Arts

In 1976 a small band of radio visionaries was inspired to create a community radio station in Provincetown. It took several years to raise awareness, gather funding, and negotiate the complicated permitting process. WOMR went on the air on March 21, 1982. Initially housed in a condominium on the corner of Bradford and Center Streets, in 1998 the station bought an exciting newly refurbished property on Commercial and Howland.

The Eastern School had been constructed in 1844 and served three grades until 1931 when it was abandoned. A few years later it became a community center that provided activities for children during the day and classes and dances for adults at night; during World War II it transformed into the Servicemen’s Center, and after the war became an American Legion post. In 1957 the space was again transformed: it was rented by visual artists who founded the Provincetown Workshop, a summer school of painting and drawing, succeeded in turn by the Long Point Gallery, an artists’ cooperative gallery.

The Legion post sold the building to David Davis, who completely refurbished the building, opening photography and painting galleries on the first floor and a studio on the second. He sold the building to WOMR, which now leases out the front gallery space to the Schoolhouse Gallery and the back to GAA.

WHY NOT COME CELEBRATE WOMR’S 37th BIRTHDAY ON SUNDAY APRIL 14th FROM 2 TO 6pm? THERE WILL BE MUSIC, FOOD, AUCTIONS AND MORE!

Click here to check out all of our Provincetown History Snippets!