7 Commercial Street

Delft Haven II Condominium (Unit 7-8).

If Cottage 3 was where the White Party was started in 1981, Cottage 7-8 has been its headquarters since 1994, as the summer home of the party’s subsequent hosts, Dr. Peter L. Page of Boston and Robert F. Lenzi of San Francisco. As originally laid out, Cottage 7 and Cottage 8 were separate. Peter L. Boyle and John J. Boyle, the condo sponsors, sold the 526-square-foot, two-bedroom Unit 7 to a Peabody resident for $48,500. The one-room, 385-square-foot Unit 8, on the beachside, was purchased by Roslyn Garfield and Phyllis Temple for $32,900. They sold it three years later for $48,500. Cottage 7 sold again in 1981, for $80,000. Cottage 8 sold again in 1985, for $98,000.

Dr. Page, the chief executive officer of the Northeast Region Red Cross Blood Center in Dedham, and his partner, Robert L. Black, bought Cottage 8 for $112,000 in 1986. Black died in 1989. Unit 7, meanwhile, went through several owners and considerable modification before it, too, was purchased by Dr. Page in 2009, for $800,000.

By this time, he had taken over from Kenneth J. Cruse and Dr. Donald E. Cote as host of the White Party. He combined the two units with a fairly understated 11-foot-long connecting structure. After Dr. Page died in 2014, the combined Unit 7-8 was purchased from his estate by Robert F. Lenzi, who also took over as the fourth host of the party. [A much fuller history, and a gallery of 88 photos, will be found in the main Delft Haven article.]

Cottage 8, at left, and Cottage 7, at right, in 2009, when they were joined together by the connecting structure in the center of this photo, taken for the Town Assessor.