Herring Cove Beach Bathhouse I
A 1961 postcard view of the first Herring Cove Bathhouse. [Josephine C. Del Deo Heritage Archive / Provincetown Public Library]
Aerial view of the bathhouse and concession stand. [2010, Dunlap]
Changing room. [2012, Dunlap]
[2009, Dunlap]
[2012, Dunlap]
[2012, Dunlap]
Jay Critchley, at left, in the changing room during his “10 Days That Shook the World” art festival just before the bathhouse was demolished. [2012, Dunlap]
“10 Days That Shook the World.” [2012, Dunlap]
“10 Days That Shook the World” [2012, Dunlap]
Text last updated in 2015 | The opening of the first Herring Cove Beach Bathhouse in 1953 was a sufficiently auspicious event to draw Gov. Christian Herter. Designed by Mario Caputo, the state-built bathhouse was a handsome-enough Modernist structure with a glass-block facade. It could almost have passed for a small-town airport terminal. Adjoining shower and locker pavilions brought its length to 148 feet.
The bathhouse was given a marvelous send-off in 2012 as the setting of an art festival, “10 Days That Shook the World: the Centennial Decade,” organized by Jay Critchley and Ewa Nogiec.
While it didn’t rank in the forefront of Provincetown’s picturesque structures, it did turn up in at least one painting: Robert Morgan’s Late Afternoon, Herring Cove Bathhouse.
¶ Republished on 18 December 2023.