(2008)
Tucker Inn.
Howard Burchman, who runs the Tucker Inn with his partner, Thomas Kinard, believes he may have been imprinted with the innkeeping gene. “I was conceived while my parents were running a small hotel in the Catskills,” he said. The distinctive mansard-roofed house, in the Second Empire style, is currently laid out with eight guest rooms. There is also a freestanding guest cottage. It was constructed in 1872.
By 1910, it had become home to the Bowley family, which produced a decorated naval hero in Rear Adm. Clarence Matheson Bowley. (His father, CDR George W. Bowley, had been a superintendent in the Life-Saving service.) In the Pacific theater during World War II, Capt. Clarence Bowley was the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Prichett, a Fletcher-class destroyer. For his conduct of the ship during the battle for Okinawa in April 1945, Captain Bowley received the Navy Cross. “On 3 April, Captain Bowley’s ship was under heavy attack by many enemy airplanes for over three hours,” the citation read, “but by his courage, skill and combat, and determination, Captain Bowley caused his ship to drive off the attacks, destroy three enemy planes and damage others. Although his ship was severely damaged in the action he continued to fight so effectively that further damage was prevented.” Bowley died in 1988. He had sold the Center Street property 14 years earlier. By the time of his death, it was being run by Linda (Sinaiko) Allen and Roger Allen as an accommodation known as the Twelve Center Guest House.
Denise Karas and her wife Katherine L. Bishop owned the property from 1995 to 1998. “We are the ones who named it the Tucker Inn and designed the sign and the stained-glass doors,” Karas told me in 2017. “We redesigned the entire house and added bathrooms and other amenities. We were also members of the Women Innkeepers [of Provincetown] group that organized Women’s Week.” So what does “Tucker” have to do with Karas and Bishop? “We made up the name of Captain Miles B. Tucker, who advanced from a cabin boy to captain without anyone suspecting that he was a ‘she,'” Karas said. “When ‘he’ got into ports of call, all the women from the town would descend upon the ship to welcome ‘him’ and have a lovely tea dance in her honor!”
The next owners, from 1998 to 2001, were Emily Flax and Carol Lynn Neal. Burchman, a human services consultant to government and nonprofit organizations who also managed the Ranch Guestlodge, took over in 2001.
¶ Last updated on 24 April 2018.
David Mayo wrote on 14 May 2015: Linda (Sinaiko) Allen – second marriage to John Lisbon.
Denise Karas wrote on 6 December 2017 and 14 December 2017: My wife, Katherine L. Bishop, and I were the owners of the Tucker Inn from 1995 to 1998. We are the ones who named it the Tucker Inn and designed the sign and the stained-glass doors. We redesigned the entire house and added bathrooms and other amenities. We were also members of the Women Innkeepers group that organized Women’s Week.
We made up the name of Captain Miles B. Tucker, who advanced from a cabin boy to captain without anyone suspecting that he was a she. When “he” got into ports of call, all the women from the town would descend upon the ship to welcome “him” and have a lovely tea dance in her honor!
We have such beautiful memories of our time at the inn. Maybe you should do a book on innkeepers’ stories. I am sure some of them would be very racy. One of our funniest ones was the day we went in to freshen a guest room and tried to push in a drawer, only to have the drawer front fall off. In our attempt to secure it, we exposed a drawer full of feather boas, masks, whips, and toys. The women who were in this room were in their 60s and looked like two nuns. Kathy kept whispering, “Don’t touch anything!”