Earlier this week The Boston Globe shared an excellent article about Provincetown’s Gifford House. You can read the full article here, Provincetown’s Gifford House was on life support. Now the historic inn is making a queer comeback.
For those unfamiliar, The Gifford House has been around since 1858, but in recent years the 33-room guesthouse has fallen into disrepair and was a place I’d tell people to avoid – despite its relatively affordable rates. However, with the sale of the guesthouse to Steve Azar, a New Bedford native who has called Ptown home for more than a decade, new life has been breathed into the space.
The Boston Globe article goes into some detail about the work Azar has done to date and his plans after the 2023 summer season concludes to finish updating the structure, bedrooms and bathrooms, furniture, and common areas as well as the Inn’s two bars, The Porch and Purgatory. Moreover, while making these updates, Azar has rediscovered a long-forgotten theater that had in recent years been used as storage and reopened it as space for artists to use.
The sale of The Gifford House bucks a national trend of LGBTQ+ spaces closing and a trend in Provincetown of independently, gay-owned inns selling to national hospitality and real estate companies (e.g., Beaconlight Guest House (now the Mercury) and the Brass Key). By selling the property to Azar and keeping it in the “Ptown Family”, The Gifford House continues a strong tradition of independent, LGBTQ+ owned businesses in the small, gay enclave. This is significant because one of the keys to Provincetown remaining gay is that local businesses remain locally and gay-owned. One only has to look at the fantastic job Hawkins & Martini have done with their 2021 purchase of Provincetown’s Crown & Anchor as an example of how locally and gay-owned businesses contribute and enrich this special community.
I want to wish Steve Azar and his team much luck and success in the coming years at The Gifford House.
BosGuy 