Watson-Dutra-Cowing compound | Formerly Shankpainter Children’s Zoo; Shankpainter Village; Simmons Farm | Alternatively, 35 Shank Painter Road or 52 Winthrop Street
Horse barn. [2014, Dunlap]
RuthAnne Cowing and Star. [2016, Dunlap]
Building 1. [2011, Dunlap]
Building 2. [2013, Dunlap]
Building 3. [2013, Dunlap]
Building 4. [2013, Dunlap]
Building 5. [2014, Dunlap]
Duck house. [2014, Dunlap]
Inside the duck house. [2014, Dunlap]
Updated on 19 July 2026 | You can count the remaining farms and family compounds in Provincetown on the fingers of one hand. Each is special but this is a great one — all the more so since it hides within plain sight of the hundreds of visitors who travel up and down Shank Painter Road, which borders the property on the west, and opposite the Winthrop Street Cemetery.
Together, the three parcels total 41,877 square feet, nearly one acre. It has been in one family’s hands since its days as the Simmons Farm, beginning in 1901. The property passed from Rosa and Manuel Simmons to their daughter, Minnie (Simmons) Silva; to her daughter, Ruth (Silva) Watson, who ran Shankpainter Village, a picturesque cottage colony along Winthrop; to her daughter, Ruth (Watson) Dutra, who lives on an abutting parcel at 52 Winthrop Street.
The architect Robert L. Valois (b1959) was a longtime renter of Cottage A, known to Town authorities as Building 4, in the former Shankpainter Village colony.
Ms. Dutra’s daughter, RuthAnne (Dutra) Cowing, lives on an abutting parcel at 35 Shank Painter with her husband, Brian Cowing, whose ancestors are buried across the street. Ms. Cowing, the town’s animal control officer, boards her lovely palomino horse, Star, on the property, in a relatively new horse barn. There are also ducks, geese, and chickens, so the traces of the farm aren’t too distant.
Part of the property was briefly the Shankpainter Children’s Zoo. The small duck house is, I believe, the last structural survivor of the zoo. A love of animals runs through the generations of this family. When I visited in 2014, the shed was being used to shelter a bunch of ducklings, making it easy to conjure the zoo days.
22 Brown Street on the Town Map, showing property lines.