PROVINCETOWN — The large, decaying buildings that formerly housed fish-processing businesses, an industrial freezer, a pair of restaurants, and several apartments at 227, 227R, and 229 Commercial St. are mostly just called “the Old Reliable” now — when they are spoken of at all.
Widely regarded as a fire trap, the buildings have been mostly unoccupied since the early 2000s, when Lorraine’s restaurant moved out of the former cold-storage building near the center of the elongated lot.
The Old Reliable Fish House, one of Cape Cod’s most celebrated restaurants in the 1970s, had already closed in the 1990s, leaving the building on the waterfront empty. Today, only the Provincetown Bookshop and a West End outpost of Essentials, both facing Commercial Street, are occupied.
Several street performers, or buskers, told the Independent that the nearly abandoned buildings at the back of the lot used to be “one of the last good squats in town,” at least before a fire in 2015 caused it to be condemned. A second fire in 2022 led the town to enclose the rear building, which belongs to Bradford Rose of Belchertown, in chain-link fencing.
Developer Christine Barker’s plans to rebuild the properties have been extensively described in the Independent since they first went to a public hearing in 2019. Barker purchased the former cold-storage building at 227-229 Commercial St. for $4.6 million in 2022 and has a pending contract with Rose for the Old Reliable Fish House building at 227R Commercial.
Barker said the front buildings “will receive much needed repair, maintenance, and mechanical updates but keep their historical appearance and integrity” in her planned redevelopment of the parcel.
The restaurant and derelict wharf at the back of the property “will need to be rebuilt and raised to comply with FEMA [flood-zone rules] but will otherwise be very reminiscent of what was originally there,” she said.
According to a 2003 survey prepared for the Mass. Historical Commission, the wharf and fish house at 227R date to 1850, when Benjamin Lancy built the structures. They were later used to store coal by the Lewis & Brown coal and lumber business, which had its office in the red building that now holds Essentials.
Henry Rose bought the property in 1965, according to town records, and renovated it into an apartment and the restaurant whose name has stuck to this day: the Old Reliable Fish House.
Chef Howard Mitcham made the restaurant famous; his Provincetown Seafood Cookbook was reprinted in 2018 with an introduction by Anthony Bourdain.
The large building fronting Commercial Street was built in 1915, according to David W. Dunlap’s Provincetown Encyclopedia, as the Colonial Cold Storage Company. A massive fish-freezing operation ran there until the 1940s, and Joseph C. Patrick opened a second-hand store called Treasure in Trash in the building in the 1950s.
Patrick eventually installed a restaurant space and nine apartments in the former cold-storage building before selling the property for $750,000 in 1996.
Since the Old Reliable and Lorraine’s closed, the wide gravel alleyway that connects Commercial Street to the harbor has become overgrown at its back end and an informal stage at its front end.
The Dirty Rotten Vipers, a New Orleans-inspired rhythm and blues band, have been performing there lately, their brassy sound spilling across summertime crowds. Pasted on the walls behind them are portraits from Michael Joseph’s series Wild West of the East, a tribute to Provincetown characters that includes some of the musicians playing instruments nearby.
On the opposite wall, on the Marine Specialties building owned by Patrick Patrick, a mural by Esteban del Valle shows a group of high-brow foxes enjoying a party in a dune shack while two other foxes — a restaurant server and a fisherman — watch from outside.
Barker’s proposals for the two adjoining parcels are being permitted separately, but altogether they include 50 hotel rooms, 13 residential condominiums, two restaurants, a conference center, retail space, and a 300-foot-long public access pier, which has been trimmed down from an earlier proposal for a 700-foot pier with a 570-foot floating marina.
Barker’s project at 227R Commercial is now undergoing state environmental review, while her plans for the Colonial Cold Storage building have been approved by the historic district commission but have not yet reached the town’s planning board or zoning board of appeals.
