Marine Hall
94 Bradford Street in an undated photo by Ross Moffett. The sign over the door reads, “Commercial Printing / Advocate Press.” [Moffett Collection/Provincetown History Preservation Project Page 431]
94 Bradford Street, around 1929. [Courtesy of Salvador R. Vasques III]
Text last updated on 8 January 2019 | Village Hall was built in 1832 as a secular meeting place. It was renamed Marine Hall after Marine Lodge No. 96 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows was chartered here in 1845. They bought the building the next year. (The graves of Odd Fellows are often carved with three links, for friendship, love, and truth.) The Masons met here from 1845 to 1870 and the structure also served as Mrs. Stearns’s private school. The first meeting of the Board of Trade (now the Chamber of Commerce) was convened here in 1870 by John Atwood Jr. The Independent Order of Good Templars, a large 19th-century temperance group, also met here. In 1886, The Advocate began printing here on steam-driven presses. The Odd Fellows built a new headquarters next door in 1895, after which this served as a Christian Science Church. The building was demolished decades ago.
¶ Republished on 16 September 2023.
94 Bradford Street (96 Bradford Street) on the Town Map, showing property lines.