225 Bradford Street. [2018, Dunlap]
Text last updated on 12 November 2016 | Alice Gloria (Matta) Crave (±1918-1954) was already living in this simple, small home in 1949 when she and her husband of two years, John F. Crave Jr. (±1925-2010), purchased it from Mamie Lema. Alice’s parents were Raul Matta and Mary (Rego) Matta. Her family ran the Matta 5¢-to-$1 Store at 226 Commercial Street, which is now Vorelli’s. She was also prominent in the Daughters of Rebekah, the women’s auxiliary to the Odd Fellows. “My father built it into the two-family home it is today,” the Craves’ daughter Patty Crave Floyd told me in 2013. “He started building it before my mom was killed in a car accident where the lights are on Route 6, coming down from where the Cape & Vineyard Electric Company was located. She had just picked up my dad from work. This accident prompted the town Rescue Squad to put into use their newly purchased rescue truck. Dad was a founding member of the Provincetown Rescue Squad.”
Crave married his second wife, Jane L. Crave (1933-2012), in 1955. “Together they finished building our home,” Patty said. John Crave had been a lineman. “He learned his framing trade from the well-known artist Gene Sparks, who at one point lived with his wife and two of his children (LeeAnn and Mims) in the apartment above our home at 225 Bradford Street,” Patty said. In 1994, Crave bought the abutting two-car garage from Marine Specialties. Be sure to read Patty’s account of how it became the “Garden of Angels,” at 221 Bradford Street.
¶ Republished on 8 October 2023.
225 Bradford Street on the Town Map, showing property lines.