Formerly Six Webster Place
Modern kitchen above, circular cellar below. [2014, Dunlap]
[2014, Dunlap]
Christopher Duff (left) and Mark A. Westman at home. [2014, Dunlap]
[2013, Dunlap]
[2014, Dunlap]
After the renovation by Westman and Duff. [2014, Dunlap]
An unwelcome headline, in the Provincetown Advocate of 17 December 1936.
The house in 1938. [Courtesy of Christopher Duff and Mark A. Westman]
An ad for Gary S. Reinhardt’s bed-and-breakfast.
Updated on 18 June 2026 | Mark A. Westman, who owned 6 Webster from 2005 to 2016 with his husband, Christopher Duff, believed the house was constructed in the 1750s. “The town assessor dates the original house, likely a single story three-quarter Cape, to 1750,” Westman wrote in an email on 25 August 2014. “Gary Reinhardt dated it to 1757 when he owned the property (no idea how one could be so precise); and our carpenter, whose been working on the house on-and-off for five years (and has come to know intimately many old Cape houses) believes portions of the house to certainly be mid-to-late-18th century — based, among other things, the hand-hewn floor joists. I have no doubt that some of the additions and alterations to the house occurred in the early or mid-19th century.”
“By the mid-19th century, C. P. Snow owned the house at 92 Bradford as well as 6 Webster,” Westman continued. “The properties were divided by a sale that occurred in 1899; the large tree in our front garden apparently was planted to mark the corner of a jig and a jag in the property line. When we had our property surveyed three years ago the surveyor discovered the line ran through the middle its trunk.”
Gertrude L. Snow sold the property in 1903 to Emma Rosa Lucas Smith, later Emma R. McDonald. She sold 6 Webster Place in 1928 to Alice C. Brown, who owned it five years before selling it to Mary L. Harlow, who was apparently already installed as a tenant. The years under Harlow were not easy ones for the house. There was a small rooftop fire in October 1932. Five months later — and far more seriously — a firebug evidently started a blaze that consumed much of the studio building next to the residence; leaving almost nothing from an upstairs studio except a Victrola. A third fire was followed in December 1936 by a fourth fire in an second-floor room. By this time, the house had gained the reputation of being haunted. And the Seamen’s Savings Bank had foreclosed on the mortgage, which was held by Alice Brown.
Minerva (Minnie) Alice Perry, a Provincetown native, bought the property from Seamen’s in October 1937, and owned it for the rest of her life — the next 37 years. Dorothy A. Perry sold the house in 1985 to Mario R. Lebert and Donald Kirby Pollock of Provincetown. In February 1992, Gary S. Reinhardt paid Lebert (by then the sole owner) $325,000 for the property.
Reinhardt, who grew up in Caliornia and was a Harvard graduate, moved to Provincetown in the early 1990s. This was shortly after his father, Burt Reinhardt, stepped down from the presidency of CNN. Gary turned the house into a bed-and-breakfast called Six Webster Place. He was also a president of the Provincetown Business Guild, a chairman of the Zoning Board of Appeals, and a manager of Mussel Beach. And he served as a rabbi, conducting Friday evening services at the Provincetown United Methodist Church or the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House.1
Raymond J. Boylan and Stanley F. Wilson bought the property from Reinhardt for $553,280 in 1997. Eight years later, they sold it for $1.15 million to Duff and Westman, who had come to Provincetown to live full-time. Westman retired in 2009 from RSP Architects, headquartered in Minneapolis. “In Provincetown he indulged his life-long passions for art and books; for several years he assisted a friend in the management of a fine arts gallery, served as a member of the town’s Historic District Commission, and was an active member of St. Mary’s of the Harbor Church (Episcopal), serving on its Vestry,” his obituary said.2 The couple’s imaginative renovation did not involve repairing a mysterious breach at the base of the chimney stack. “Our contractor told us, ‘Whatever you do, don’t close up the opening,’” Westman told me. “‘That’s where the spirits come and go.’”
They sold 6 Webster in 2016 for $1.3 million and moved to Washington. The property is now owned by a resident of Watertown, Mass.
In memoriam
• Minerva (Minnie) Alice Perry (1895-1974)
Find a Grave Memorial No. 119732151.
• Mark Allan Westman (1955-2022)
Find a Grave Memorial No. 245980910.
1 “Reinhardt Keeps His Cool as ZBA Chair,” by Mary Ann Brag, Provincetown Banner, 20 March 2003.
2 “Mark Westman Obituary,” The Minnesota Star Tribune, 6 November 2022.