(2009)
Frenchie’s Shack | Dune Shack 13.
Near the original site of the 1914 Peaked Hill Bars station, a dune shack was built in 1941 or 1942 for Jeanne “Frenchie” Chanel. Since 1953, the caretakers of the shack have been the painter Sal Del Deo and his wife, Josephine, who was a leader with Ross Moffett of the fight during the ’50s and ’60s to create the Cape Cod National Seashore. When shifting sands had all but buried the original tarpaper-and-dirt-floor shack in 1976, the current structure was built on top of it. The Del Deos have shared use of the site by arrangement first with Chanel and then, after her death in 1983, with her daughter, Adrienne Schnell. Josephine, pictured, died in 2016.
¶ Adapted from Building Provincetown (2015).