The Blight Of Provincetown

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the biggest eye-sore on Cape Cod: the hideous, ungainly, Italianate monstrosity that has blighted the sky-line of Provincetown for almost a century. Andy Towle has a lovely photo of a sun pillar synching with it a few years ago. Well, the sun is lovely. Here's the Cape Cod Times piece and the Boston Herald piece. Why do I hate it so? The architecture so glaringly out of tune with the Cape and utterly alien to the Pilgrims it's supposed to commemmorate; the silliness of trying to claim the Pilgrims, when they had the good sense to move on to Plymouth pronto; the waste of money (it was a government project, of course); and the whole civic uplift that accompanied its Teddy Roosevelt beginnings. Yes, I loathe "national greatness conservatism." A great country needn't build some stupid Siena knock-off to remind itself of its origins. The one saving grace is that if you look at it with its side straight on, the top of the tower looks like Donald Duck. My only regret is that they didn't take the 100th anniversary to blow the thing up. Alas, it's here to stay.