Cordeiro compound | Fore and Aft Cottages
10 Brewster Street. [2013, Dunlap]
Susan Leonard and Rosemary Hillard at home on Brewster Street in 2014. [Dunlap]
Text last updated in 2015 | The northern half of Louis Cordeiro’s Brewster Street compound is still in the hands of the Cordeiro family. The shed-like building with a second-story deck began in the Beach Point section of North Truro as two cottages, known as Fore and Aft. They were brought here and united by a second story. Current residents include the artist and poet Rosemary Hillard and her partner Susan Leonard, among the leading local historians of the current generation. She’s been instrumental in capturing the soon-to-be-lost stories of the Portuguese community and preserving them in the annual Provincetown Portuguese Festival booklet. The old Fore and Aft building is not the only Truro import on Brewster Street; No. 27 was shipped up here on flat cars shortly after the Old Colony Railroad reached Provincetown in 1873.
Among the residents of the Cordeiro compound is the artist Joan Pereira, formerly of 22 Mechanic Street. As a young woman, she studied on a scholarship at the Albany Institute of History and Art. She visited Provincetown to seek out well-known artists, and — in the bargain — met Antone Pereira Jr., whom she would marry. By her account, Pereira studied at one time or another with Edwin Dickinson, Jim Forsberg, Henry Hensche, Philip Malicoat, Bruce McKain, Fritz Pfeiffer, and Myron Stout. Her work includes brilliantly colored still lifes, landscapes, and townscapes.
¶ Republished on 12 November 2023.
10 Brewster Street on the Town Map, showing property lines.