Provincetown

Our Sheer family arrived in Provincetown, from our Greenwich Village Hudson Street home, in the late 1940s, in part because Ben and Marcia were both already Hans Hofmann students on West 8th Street and sought to share the summer experience with him and their 8th Street colleagues. The draw of the Cape and Provincetown was the camaraderie of the many Hofmann students, artists from New York, Boston and other American cities as well as many Europeans. The famous Cape light, fresh air and wonderful seafood restaurants, some of which from that era still exist today. Additionally, there was a thriving gallery scene and many interesting shops to keep everyone busy after the beach. The Provincetown Artists Association Museum came into being in 1912 and by the 1940s was a major feature and attraction for artists every summer. In addition to artistic P-town, there were literary, theatrical, musical and film guests as well as a good deal of tourists who arrived by car, by train -- the Cape Codder -- to Hyannis, by air from Logan in Boston and the Boston-Provincetown Ferry at the center of town.

Captain Jack's Wharf

Some fellow students had recommended a place not far from Hans and Miz Hofmann's P-town home, along Commercial Street called Captain Jack's Wharf. Their home and the wharf were both at the far end of town. The wharf was a charming bundling of small shacks and cabins that had been built on it or brought there -- transplanted. None were insulated, just bare wood with no sheetrock walls and featured lots of light and cross ventilation perfect for summer breezes. In those days the owner was Ruth Hiebert (1922-2004), likely a daughter of Dr. Daniel Hiebert and his wife Emily, French-Canadian by ethnicity. Ruth also acted as the rental agent, hostess and doyenne.

The Wharf's fame had preceded it. Tennessee Williams, the playwright, had spent summers there until just a year or so before we arrived. And, before him, there was another even more famous playwright associated with Captain Jack's, Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill didn't stay there but turned a large shack on the Wharf into a theater in 1916. By the 1940s the Wharf began to attract more and more visual artists, in part because of the proximity to Hofmann and in part because of the rise of Abstract Expressionism, many of whose practitioners started summering there.

Captain Jack's Wharf is still located at 73A Commercial Street in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It is an iconic, salt-crusted cluster of overwater cabins and shacks. Originally established in 1897, by local fisherman, Jackson R. Williams (Captain Jacks) the Wharf started as a 100-foot fishing pier for unloading catches and mending nets. In 1912, Captain Jack expanded the wharf to 200 feet to capitalize on Provincetown's burgeoning tourism industry. He began renting out his ramshackle wooden pier sheds to summer tourists and artists. Following his passing in 1935, Dr. Daniel Hiebert and his wife Emily took over the property in the late 1930s, operating it as "Studios-on-the-Sea." It was eventually renamed to simply Captain Jack's Wharf.

Throughout the mid-20th century, the wharf transformed into a legendary bohemian retreat for the summer arts colony. It provided inspiration and shelter for legendary creatives, including Barbra Streisand, Elliott Gould, and Lynn Redgrave. Most notably, the acclaimed playwright Tennessee Williams spent time on the wharf in the 1940s, where he famously had a brief, influential romance with ballet dancer Kip Kiernan and wrote the verse play The Purification. But, it was the visual artists that added even more luster to the theater and film community. By the late 1940s and through the 1960s, the Wharf saw summer artist-renters that included not only our family but also Mark Rothko, his wife Mell and their two children, Christopher and Kate, Milton and Sally Avery and daughter March, Sam Feinstein and wife, artist and educator, Barbara-Anne Crawford, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner and Robert Motherwell. Helen Frankenthaler arrived and summered in 1960. Almost every late afternoon an impromptu cocktail party occurred with a convivial atmosphere among the 40 or so annual summer renters. Depending on the tide tables, it was possible to dive off the Wharf and then climb up a ladder or swim into shore next to the pier, walk up the stairs and rejoin the merriment.

Remarkably, the fragile, quirky-angled wooden wharf and its tiny waterfront cabins have survived major historical disasters, including the ice barrage of 1977 and the famous Blizzard of 1978. Today, the property operates as a condominium association that is still rented out to summer visitors seeking a nostalgic taste of old Provincetown. To preserve the iconic structures, a specialized engineering effort was implemented to support the pier without altering its historical aesthetic.