(Circa 1979)
Provincetown Hotel at Gabriel’s | Gabriel’s Condominium.
Elizabeth Gabriel Brooke (pictured in about 1979), proprietor of the Provincetown Hotel at Gabriel’s and founder of the Women Innkeepers of Provincetown, says hers is the oldest continuously-run woman-owned inn in the country, having opened in 1979 as the Gabriel Apartments & Guest Rooms. “Gabriel’s sparked an entire movement in which lesbians publicly designated specific locations as women-owned and for women only,” Karen Christel Krahulik wrote, in Provincetown. (Gabriel’s itself has “welcomed everyone for many years — both men, women, gay and straight, families, children and companion animals,” Brooke notes.)
First, Brooke, Laurel Daigle Wise, and Christina and William Davidson acquired Nos. 104 and 104A, the abandoned Lighthouse Apartments for fishermen and transients. Cyrus E. Dallin, sculptor of the bas relief next door, Signing the Compact, had stayed at 104 Bradford. The Provincetown Light and Power Company was here in the 1940s, succeeded by the Cape & Vineyard Electric Company. Brooke and her partners began rebuilding it in 1978.
Brooke acquired No. 102A in 1995 and the handsome, Federal-style No. 102 in 2000, and rebuilt both from basement to attic. Through 2013, this was known as the Ashbrooke Inn at Gabriel’s.
¶ Adapted from Building Provincetown (2015). ¶ Image courtesy of Elizabeth Gabriel Brooke.
Elizabeth Gabriel Brooke wrote on 26 November 2011: Although we are women-owned and -operated (by Elizabeth Gabriel and Elizabeth Anne Brooke), we are not for women only. On the contrary, we have welcomed everyone for many years — both men, women, gay and straight, families, children and companion animals.
Denise Avallon wrote on 7 September 2012: I don’t think No. 104 was moved because of the park [as the entry originally stated]. According to the 1919 and 1929 Sanborn maps, it was in the same place on the edge of the park. Nos. 106, 108-110, and 116’s stable were not so lucky.