10A Bradford Street Condominium, Main building
10A Bradford Street, main building at left and cottage at right. [2004, Massachusetts Historical Commission]
A 1938 street atlas showed the overall lot as a filling station and the main house as an automobile repair shop. Two gasoline tanks were shown on Bradford Street. [“Provincetown, Barnstable County, Massachusetts,” Sanborn Map Company, February 1938, Plate 3, Town Document Center, Sanborn Historic Land Maps]
Capt. Manuel Enos (1870-1955) was a son of Provincetown and the “last of the Grand Bankers to go out of this port,” as the Advocate said at the time of his death, when he was counted among the “fast vanishing crew of deep water mariners and able skippers of the day of sails.” In his retirement from the sea, he worked for the Vita Fisheries Company on the Town Wharf and managed the Captain Manuel Enos Station in what is now the main house at No. 10A.
Deborah Asbrand, who has owned one of the condo units since 1996, said the main house may have been a stable at one time. Captain Enos bought the property in 1931. A 1938 street atlas showed the overall lot as a filling station and the main house as an automobile repair shop. Two gasoline tanks were shown on Bradford Street. (The corner cottage was not yet standing.)
Captain Enos evidently ran the place as a convenience store, to judge from a 1941 account of a burglary in which the perpetrators made off with five cartons of cigarettes, three boxes of candy, and ice cream — strongly suggesting the involvement of young boys.1
Enos sold the place in 1946 to John R. Anthony. Steven R. Page of Springfield acquired the property in 1994 for $120,000. He turned it into a four-unit condo the next year: three units in the main house and a 441-square-foot unit in the cottage.
Deborah Asbrand wrote on 15 July 2014: I’ve had a little condo there for 18 years. So far as I know, 10A has a quirky history. George Bryant filled me in on the background when he served as my home inspector in 1996, and Ron Souza provided some (actually, many) more details when he worked on my floors a few years back. The tale I’ve heard is a winding one — and I’m not entirely sure of the accuracy — but I’ve been told it was once a stable and then later a gas station owned by a man named Wally [perhaps Wallace F. Adams] who had lost an arm in a fishing accident.
¶ Last updated on 10 July 2016.
1 “Thieves Break in Capt. Enos’ Station / Take Cigarettes, Candy, and Cash — Police Check Clues,” Provincetown Advocate, 5 June 1941.
In memoriam
• Capt. Manuel Enos (1870-1955)
Find a Grave Memorial No. 31067418.
10A Bradford Street on the Town Map, showing property lines.
Also at this address
• Cottage