A waterfront Queen Anne cottage perched on a bluff above Provincetown Harbor is on the market for the first time in 110 years, and it's the same home where American impressionist Max Bohm once summered with his family. Grand View, at 676 Commercial Street, has been reduced from its original $4.9 million asking price to $3.995 million, putting it well above the town's typical listing but squarely in line with other landmark artistic estates that have recently changed hands on the Outer Cape.
Bohm bought the house as a summer residence in 1916, according to Boston.com, and died just seven years later in Provincetown, but the property never left his family's hands. Bohm was already a major figure in American art circles by then: born in Cleveland in 1868, he won a gold medal at the Paris Salon in 1898 for his canvas “En Mer,” was elected a National Academician in 1920, and painted murals for the Cuyahoga County Courthouse, according to background compiled by Wikipedia. He became one of the founders of Provincetown's art colony, and locally he served as “Skipper” of the Beachcombers, a historic Provincetown artists' club, in 1921 and 1922, according to Building Provincetown.
The house itself predates Bohm's ownership. It was built around 1880 by Charles E. Perry and Matilda M. Perry, developers who held large tracts of land in Provincetown's East End, per Building Provincetown, before the Bohm family acquired it decades later. Bohm reportedly did not stay through the winters, and the home has passed down through four generations since, per the same account, remaining in the family the entire time.
A Queen Anne Built Like a Ship
Boston.com describes Grand View as an elegant Queen Anne cottage, structurally sound and well-maintained, with 2,166 square feet of living space on a 1.2-acre lot. The house is built like a ship, according to the outlet's report, with large first-floor rooms, a porch wrapping around three sides, and a distinctive five-sided living room window bay with a deep window seat overlooking the water. A bedroom bay window also frames water views, and stairs lead down the bluff from the property to a gate on Commercial Street, itself also known as Route 6A.
Inside, the four-bedroom, two-bathroom home retains a mix of period character and old-fashioned function, the listing details show. The dining room fireplace, originally coal-burning and later covered over and converted to a wood-burning stove inset, still keeps its mantel, surround, sconces, and mirrored overmantel intact. Bathrooms feature shower-tub combinations, with one clawfoot tub, and the kitchen — fitted with white appliances and cabinets and a gas stove — has room for a dining table. The home also includes a first-floor laundry room, a full pantry, a linen closet, an outdoor shower, insulated windows, and central heating, and per Boston.com it is ready to be occupied immediately, though the kitchen and bathrooms need updating. Adjoining municipal conservation land adds extra space and privacy around the property, which faces both Route 6A and the water with views of Provincetown Harbor, Long Point, and Cape Cod Bay. The house even appeared in a 1900 postcard, predating the Bohm family's ownership by more than a decade.
Four Generations of Artists
Bohm's wife, Zella Bohm, was herself an artist and summered at Grand View until 1956, according to Boston.com's reporting. Their granddaughter, Anne Packard, has carried the family's artistic reputation into the present; Anne is now 92 and the subject of a 2026 documentary, “Anne Packard: An Artist's Resolve,” directed by Arthur Egeli, which chronicles her move to Provincetown in 1977 and screened at regional film festivals throughout the year, according to GBH. Anne Packard also established the family's commercial presence in town in 1988, when she converted a former Christian Science Church on Commercial Street into the Packard Gallery, a space that still shows work from multiple generations of the family, per the same outlet.
That lineage extends further still. Anne's daughters, Cynthia and Leslie, are both painters, and Cynthia — Max Bohm's great-granddaughter — earned her MFA from MassArt in 1981, studied under Fritz Bultman, and was chosen as the commemorative artist for Citizens Bank Pops by the Sea, according to the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. Decades earlier, in 1964, Bohm's daughter Elizabeth “Betty” Bohm Schwarz publicly pushed for local zoning rules to protect historic homes from commercial demolition, per Building Provincetown, a preservation instinct that arrived long before Provincetown's modern historic district protections existed.
Where Grand View Sits in Today's Market
The $3.995 million asking price places Grand View well above Provincetown's broader housing market, where median listing prices have hovered between $1.6 million and $1.75 million as of August, according to Realtor.com. The listing, registered under MLS #22603390, originally translated to roughly $2,262 per square foot at its initial $4.9 million price point before the recent adjustment. William Raveis holds the listing, with agent Gregg Russo representing the property, Boston.com reports.
Grand View isn't the only historic artist-linked estate to test Provincetown's luxury market recently. The Hazel House hit the market at 4 Center Street for $4.8 million in late 2025, another longtime creative hub in town. Together, the two listings show how deeply Provincetown's real estate market remains tied to its identity as a haven for artists — one where a family's legacy can sit on the same bluff, overlooking the same harbor, for well over a century.
