(1981)
Jones Locker bar.
In the 1970s and early ’80s, when Provincetown was at its nonconformist zenith, a neo-Classical belfry, topped by a tapering cupola and whale wind vane, stood outside the Jones Locker Beach Apartments at 45 Commercial Street. It’s gone now but, aside from this handsome color picture taken in 1981 by David Jarrett, you can also get a good glimpse of this marvelous folly on the back endsheet of Provincetown Discovered, by Edmund V. Gillon Jr., and in Josephine Del Deo’s photo for the Massachusetts Historical Commission Inventory of 1973-1977. A trustee of the Jones Locker Condominium, Philip Franchini, relayed a story from Patrick Trani at 49 Commercial Street that the cupola came from a building at Harvard that had wound up in a Dorchester junkyard, where it was purchased by Lawrence F. “Larry” Jones. He used it as a bar for grand parties on the deck. A 1985 survey showed the octagonal bar still in place, but it was gone by 1988.
¶ Adapted from Building Provincetown (2015). ¶ Image by and courtesy of David Jarrett.
Philip Franchini wrote on 9 October 2014: I asked Patrick, long-time resident at 49 Commercial Street, about the steeple. He told me Larry Jones got it at a junkyard in Dorchester. It came from a building at Harvard where it was being replaced. Larry used it as a bar for the grand parties he threw on the deck at 45 Commercial Street. It was demolished along with the other out buildings or shacks that were on the deck. The deck was then rebuilt as the base for many of the 14 units of the current Jones Locker.
Left: Jones Locker bar in 1976, by Josephine Del Deo for the Massachusetts Historical Commission Inventory. Right: Jones Locker bar in 1981, by David Jarrett.