When Steve Azar bought the 33-room, 150-year-old Gifford House in 2023, he inherited more than a run-down building. The plaster needed repair, carpets were torn, and the paint had faded, but Azar saw an opportunity to preserve a queer sanctuary at the tip of Cape Cod. When local playwright Cody Sullivan asked to use the hotel for theater, Azar—moved to tears—welcomed the idea. The purchase quickly became less about a real-estate flip and more about protecting a place for queer art, community, and joy as outside investors increasingly sought a piece of Provincetown.
Provincetown’s reputation as a queer refuge is hard to pin down for outsiders but obvious to regulars: in summer, people stroll the streets in everything from swimsuits to sequins, drag performers hand out flyers, and LGBTQ+-owned shops and restaurants set the town’s unmistakable tone. Independent places such as Queen Vic Guest House, Tin Pan Alley, the Red Room, The Canteen, SAULT, Butch, and the historic Gifford House all help maintain that distinct, queer-owned character.
Built in 1868 on Carver Street, Gifford House began life as the last stop on a horse-drawn stagecoach route. Over the years it hosted notable visitors—Theodore Roosevelt laid the Pilgrim Monument’s cornerstone in 1907—and weathered Provincetown’s shifting identities: a Portuguese fishing enclave, an artists’ colony, and a refuge during the AIDS crisis. Through those changes, Gifford quietly offered queer guests a place to escape, even if only for a summer week.
From 1994, Jim Foss and his husband Harvey Wilson ran the hotel with an eye toward accessibility and community. The basement bar, Purgatory, was one of the country’s oldest leather bars, and its music used to pulse through the hotel late into the night. By the time Foss was ready to step back, the building showed its age—mildew-scented rooms and drafty bathrooms—and the pandemic closure of Purgatory in 2020 left an eerie quiet. Large hotel operators had begun buying properties in town—companies like Linchris Hotel Corporation among them—but Foss resisted offers that treated queer tourism as a revenue stream rather than a community to steward.
Azar, who had operated the Stowaway Inn from 2019 before selling it in late 2022 to Summer of Sass (a nonprofit that brings queer young adults from restrictive places to Provincetown for summer programs), approached Foss in December 2022 and offered to buy Gifford. He promised continuity: a custodianship based on friendship and shared purpose instead of a corporate makeover. Foss agreed, passing stewardship to someone with a similar commitment.
Since reopening in spring 2023, Azar has made practical upgrades—air conditioning, modernized facilities—and revived the hotel as an entertainment hub. Gifford now hosts piano singalongs, Latin nights, country line dancing, and a rowdy club night called Fag Bash in the restored Purgatory. Inspired by Sullivan’s idea, Azar reopened the theater as the Wilde Playhouse, a 100-seat speakeasy-style venue for local, offbeat plays and performances. Lines have returned down the street and bass once again reverberates through the building.
That entrepreneurial energy from a new generation of queer business owners helps keep Provincetown independent. The Provincetown Business Guild, founded in 1978 to draw queer visitors, still coordinates theme weeks and marquee events like Provincetown Carnival—a weeklong summer festival that last year attracted roughly 79,000 people, far outnumbering the town’s year-round population of under 3,500.
Programming across town has shifted toward a broader, more inclusive vision of queer life. Organizers now use the term “queer” more often, marketing aims to represent people beyond the muscular white gay male archetype, and grassroots groups press for racial and body-type diversity. The town remains predominantly white—about 87 percent, according to a 2023 DEI study—but community organizations are working to change that. Frolic, which curates events for queer people of color, has expanded its Provincetown takeover into a multi-day weekend that drew roughly 1,200 attendees in June 2025. Juneteenth Ptown, founded in 2021, has grown from a celebration into an ongoing volunteer effort focused on education and activism.
Azar and Gifford contribute to year-round life in town, opening their spaces for figure drawing classes, free potlucks, writing open-mics, and other gatherings. Even in winter, during events like Holly Folly, Gifford’s Porch Bar and the revived Purgatory fill with people seeking warmth, company, and a reminder of midsummer revelry.
Looking ahead, Azar plans further additions—a spa with steam and massage rooms, an outdoor cold plunge, and cosmetic refreshes—while keeping the hotel’s historic name. He discovered that “Gifford” can be interpreted as “brave giver” in Old English, a fitting emblem for a place whose mission is generosity and refuge. That name—and the community it supports—shapes what Gifford House aims to be for Provincetown’s queer residents and visitors.
Nathan Tavares is a writer from Boston. His next novel, The Disco at the End of the World, is available for pre-order and will be published in June 2026 by Titan Books.