The former art studio of early wood-block printmaker Blanche Lazzell was razed this week in Provincetown, on the eve of exhibition openings of her work at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Provincetown Art Association.

The waterfront building, at 351A Commercial Street, has been described in historical documents as a 'quaint' wharf studio with a wide front porch, overflowing with flowers and potted plants, where for more than 40 years, starting in 1918, Lazzell worked, entertained visitors and gave $5 art lessons. Lazzell died in 1956.

'I have a number of postcards of Blanche outside the cottage, with flowers growing all around,' Leslie Garfield, a collector of Lazzell's work, said on Tuesday from New York. Garfield contributed 69 of the 120 Lazzell pieces for the upcoming Museum of Fine Arts exhibit.

'The studio was an integral part of the whole Provincetown art scene,' Garfield added. 'It's where she worked. It's what she wrote about.'

Lazzell, who was born in West Virginia and studied in Paris, completed 138 color wood blocks between 1916 and 1955, along with many monoprints and oils, and has been noted as an 'early American cubist' and a pioneer of modern art in the U.S.

The demolition of the former studio, one of three buildings set one behind the other on the .15 acre lot in Provincetown, has saddened many. Others, though, would point to a faulty inventory of town's historical properties; the lack of a locally controlled historical district; and the lack of awareness and ongoing involvement of residents in historical projects.

One-thousand-eight-hundred-thirty structures in Provincetown were inventoried in 1988, in Provincetown's application for its National Register of Historic Places designation, which was granted in 1989.

'There are inaccuracies in the inventory, and the correction of those errors and updating the inventory would be a very worthwhile exercise for the town, as would creating a historical district, which would put the responsibility back on the town instead of on the property owner,' Regina Binder, of Binder, Boland and Associates, Inc. of Provincetown, said on Tuesday.

Binder has for the last 17 months represented the new owners of 351A Commercial St., Corey Kustes and Nelson Hitchcock, U.S. residents with a current London address, in their negotiation of state and local permitting procedures for their planned construction on the site.

The new owners' plans, which received initial approval from the Provincetown Zoning Board of Appeals on Feb. 2, 2001, include demolishing Lazzell's studio and rebuilding a similarly sized building a few feet west; demolishing the small shed behind the cottage and rebuilding it a few feet west, and then connecting the 'new' shed, by a deck, to the third to-be-renovated house behind it.

Binder, whose consulting firm specializes in building restoration and preservation, declined on Tuesday to comment on whether she knew about Lazzell's use of the cottage and said that the owners do not want to speak publicly.

Much of the finger-pointing on why Lazzell's studio was destroyed, though, is directed at the National Register inventory, which was prepared by a consultant in architectural history, Brian Pfeiffer of Cambridge.

Lazzell's studio is listed in that inventory as 'non-contributing' to the historical significance of the property, while the other two buildings are listed at 'contributing.' The designation of 'contributing' is what the town Building Dept., the Cape Cod Commission and the state Historical Commission use to flag properties for review, where demolition or substantial alteration is being considered.

The 'shed' at 351A Commercial St., which currently stands behind where Lazzell's studio was, is now under review at the Cape Cod Commission because it, too, is slated for demolition, but it has the 'contributing' status in the National Register inventory.

Provincetown Building Commissioner Warren Alexander said this week that he was unaware of the significance of the waterfront cottage at 351A Commercial St. and that he refers strictly to the binder in his office that contains the National Register inventory, which labeled the cottage as 'non-contributing.'

Spokespersons for the Cape Cod Commission and the state Historical Commission also cited the inventory this week in saying that they had no knowledge of Lazzell's use of the building, as did Provincetown Historical Commission co-chair Gino Verzone.

'There is a list of properties, and we serve as an advisory group to the Building Dept. on whether alterations on these properties are historically appropriate,' Verzone said on Tuesday.

Pfeiffer, who created the inventory based on local historians' documentation and by visiting each site individually with an assessor's map, said on Tuesday that the inventory is not meant to be a 'permit for all time' and should be reviewed by local historical groups and updated at least every 10 years.

'I identified [the Lazzell cottage] as a minor contributing, as it's listed in the federal legislation, because it seemed borderline on exterior architecture,' Pfeiffer said, after reviewing his files on the property. 'They said, 'We can't deal with this,' so everything that was listed as minor contributing was called non-contributing. It was borderline from what I could see, which was pretty heavily weighted toward the visual.'

The criteria for properties being listed on the National Register inventory includes an association with events and the lives of persons considered significant to the town's past, as well as the embodiment of distinctive architectural characteristics.

'The sad thing is that, yes, that building was important,' longtime Provincetown resident Josephine Del Deo said on Tuesday of the Lazzell cottage. 'It was a real Provincetown-waterfront-studio-type place ... with hollyhocks and roses all over the place.'

Del Deo and others completed a survey of 1,300 historical properties in Provincetown in the late 1970s, a sampling of which is now at the town library. Del Deo was also instrumental in the unsuccessful attempt to implement a local historical district in Provincetown in 1977 and in making the first state and federal overtures for Provincetown's National Register status.

'If you don't have citizen awareness, then you get a building being razed,' Del Deo said.

Jim Bakker, curator of the upcoming Art Association exhibit and a Provincetown resident, said this week that he had heard rumors about upcoming changes to 351A Commercial St.

'It never really dawned on me that it was possible for it to come down as quickly and without any notoriety,' Bakker said. 'I kind of pictured someone chained there to save it. [Lazzell] is certainly the most important woman artist to dwell here in Provincetown and make a real artistic statement here.'

'In the winter, things can go down and go up before people realize what's happening,' Bakker added.

The 'Loeb and Lazzell – Women on the Edge of Modernism' exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association opens Jan. 18, and the 'From Paris to Provincetown: Blanche Lazzell and the Color Woodcut' exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts opens Jan. 23. (See story on page 25.)

The National Register of Historic Places is a program of the federal Dept. of the Interior and the National Park Service.