127-129 Commercial Street.
What looks like — and functions like — the driveway at 129 Commercial Street is, in fact, the 108-foot-long vestige of Freeman Avenue, a 10-foot-wide street that once ran to the waterfront. It bounded the property of Nathan R. Freeman at 127 Commercial Street (then denominated 118 Commercial Street) and led to Nathaniel Freeman’s Wharf. New Yorkers accustomed to thinking of “Avenues” as major thoroughfares — and larger than “Streets” — might be surprised by the fact that they tend to be the smallest roadways in Provincetown. Perhaps there is a slight throwback to the British usage of avenue to mean a “tree-lined road or path, especially one that leads to a country house or similar building.”¹
The current Tax Map 6-4 shows the vestige of Freeman Avenue. The map was revised and reprinted by CAI Technologies.
¶ Last updated on 16 January 2019.
129 Commercial Street on the Town Map.
Thumbnail image: Detail of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map From Provincetown, Barnstable County, Massachusetts (1889), courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. Digital ID No. g3764pm.g038261889. (Highlighting of Freeman Avenue by the author, for visual clarity.)
¹ “Avenue,” Definition 1.2, in Oxford Living Dictionaries.