167 Commercial Street

BEKS Condominium (Unit 4).

From the town square, Unit 4 — the only unit without a shopfront — appears modest and petite, tucked away behind a veranda, and between Units 3 and 5. It’s almost like something out of the Shire, hiding beyond what looks like a dwarf Alberta spruce. But a walk along the beach discloses its true nature: it faces the harbor with a patio and two full porch decks. Its original owner paid $272,500 for the place in 1990. Seven years later, a couple from Tempe, Ariz., paid $525,000 for it. They sold it in 2002 for $1,095,000 to Alix L. L. Ritchie, who was then publisher of the Provincetown Banner, and her partner, the artist Martha R. Davis. Ritchie had just sold Unit 5 next door, but at this point continued to own Unit 2 and Unit 3 of the BEKS Condominium, which were used for Banner offices. Joan A. Lenane, the general manager and later the chief operating officer of the Banner, had her office here in Unit 4. Staff meetings — and staff parties — were held in the floor below, which has one of the house’s decks.

When Ritchie sold the Banner to GateHouse Media in 2008, she transferred title in this unit to Cohorts Inc., the corporate successor to The Provincetown Banner Inc. With the change in name came a change in business — from newspaper publication to real-estate ownership — and a change in cast. Leslie A. Brock succeeded Ritchie as president. The new directors were Sue Harrison, a Banner editor and reporter who shared a home with Brock on Holway Avenue; and Sally A. Rose, the editor of The Banner, and Joan A. Lenane, who shared a home on Center Street.

Cohorts sold the unit in 2015 to an Atlanta couple for $1,180,000. They sold it in turn to a couple from Los Angeles, in 2019, for $1,700,000.

Unit 4 is the single-gable house on the left. 2011 photo by David W. Dunlap.