32 Alden Street

32 Alden Street. [2012, Dunlap]

Alden Bluff Condominium. Three different contemporary parcels, under three different owners, can trace their origins to the Facha-Lopes property. Three generations of this family owned the undivided Alden Street frontage for the better part of a century: Frances Tiadora (Silva) Facha and her husband, Frank Roderick Facha Sr.; their daughter, Mary (Facha) Lopes, and her husband, Manuel J. Lopes; and the Lopeses’ son, Maurice Henry Lopes.

Frank Facha (sometimes rendered “Farcha” or “Fasha”) was Azorean by birth, as was Frances, who was born on Pico and came to Provincetown at the age of 18, around 1881. Their daughter Mary was graduated from Provincetown High School and, in 1914, was wed at the Church of St. Peter the Apostle to Manuel Lopes, a fisherman from Olhao, Portugal. He fished for 60 years before running the Cape End Laundry.

As late as 1946, the only structure on the property was the main house at the crest of the hillock, which was built in the mid-19th century and remains the principal architectural feature today.¹ After World War II, the family built a one-story utilitarian structure on the south side of the lot. This came to have the address of 28 Alden Street after the parcel was subdivided, but was designated No. 30 in the 1950s, when it was the Cape End Laundry.

Just six months before his death in 1996, Maurice Lopes sold 30 Alden Street to Jane E. Gildersleeve and David R. Curtis, of Ironia, N.J., for $235,000. Curtis and Gildersleeve then divided the parcel into three lots: 28 Alden Street, with the old laundry building, on the south; 30 Alden Street, with the main house, in the center; and 32 Alden Street, unimproved, on the north.⁴

They sold 28 Alden Street in 1997 and 32 Alden Street in 1998.

James M. Anderson, the purchaser of No. 32, created the Alden Bluff Condominium the next year and constructed this house, with three residential units. They are currently owned by residents of Provincetown, Fort Lauderdale, and San Francisco.