
(2009)
Mission Bell | Dune Shack 5.
Mission Bell is the popular name for this cottage on Professors Row, though the bell — a useful navigational landmark out in the dunes — was salvaged in 1955 not from a mission but from a one-room schoolhouse in Michigan. The shack was built by Dom Avila and Jake Loring in 1936 and bought in 1953 by Mildred Champlin and her husband, Nathaniel, a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and a lecturer at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Unlike most shoreline buildings, it has managed to stay in one place over the years; as has the Champlin family, which has continuously occupied the cottage for six decades, now under a stipulation of settlement with the government running for the lifetime of the Champlins’ children. It’s the shack closest to the wreck of H.M.S. Somerset.
¶ Adapted from Building Provincetown (2015).